Hotcakes

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of the blog that Mark Bittman is one of my favourite culinary pin up boys men. If I had to nominate a top three there’d also be delicious Nigel and our own lovely Tony. But let’s not be heterosexist, my soft spot for Annabel also deserves a mention.

What all four of these cooking heroes have in common is a laid back attitude to home cooking. There's also a shared joy of homegrown produce and a relaxed approach to following recipes. All of which tick my boxes.

But back to Mr Bittman. I enjoyed his recent New York Times piece on whole-grain pancakes. The accompanying video showed him incorporating some cooked oatmeal (porridge) with a scant amount of flour, herbs, nuts and dried fruit. I took notes as I watched! I made guesses as to quantities. Why? Because at the time I couldn’t actually find the recipe.

As fate would have it, last weekend came around and I awoke to an unexpected dose of mild food poisoning (sadly from an oldish favourite on Brunswick Street). My partner suffered likewise, sealing the deal as to the source of the infection. Once my digestion calmed down all I wanted to eat was porridge. Which meant the next day, when I was fully functioning again, a cup or so of rolled oats slowly cooked with rice milk and a little banana sat waiting to be used in my fridge.

My version varies somewhat from the original but they look and I suspect taste pretty authentic. The notes in italics explain the variations. The quantities were more than adequate for two very hungry adults.

Super healthy pancakes with oats and cardamom

Combine the following dry ingredients:

2 tabs ground almonds
2 tabs raw rolled oats
I chopped the almonds roughly in the food processor then threw in the raw whole oats for a couple of whizzes. The texture in the finished product was lovely – but I really wonder if it needed the raw oats at all.
1/2 tsp salt
Seeds of about 4 pods cardamom
I pounded salt and herbs together in a mortar and pestle. The aroma was quite strong, so I used this as a guide to the amount of cardamom seeds I used. The cardamom was very subtle in the first pancake I cooked but was more noticeable in later ones.
1/2 cup unbleached flour
This was perfect, in both texture and binding of the batter.
1 tsp baking powder

Wet ingredients

Whisk together:
1 egg
1/2 c rice (or other) milk
I added a further 1/3 cup when mixing the final batter. to get to the right consistency.
1 tsp vanilla extract
As there was a trace of banana already in my porridge and I knew I’d be using the perfect runny apricot jam on top, no need for the addition of dried apricots. Even without that, I think they’d be over kill. The vanilla, though not in the original recipe, was a subtle flavour enhancer that I’d use again.

Stir into the combined wet ingredients:
1+ cups porridge
I had a bit over a cup of left over porridge cooked with a little banana and rice milk from the day before. As leftover porridge tends to congeal, using clean hands to break up the lumps through the wet ingredients was the most effective method.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir gently.
Despite my initial scepticism, it really does create a “batter consistency”, even with so little flour. They needed to be loosened a little more with milk. I decided to let the batter sit for half an hour. That’s the general rule for flour based pancake batters, the flour swells a little but more than that the cardamom has a chance to infuse.

Cook in rice bran oil in a hot pan. They needed at least 4 minutes a side. And like most pancakes I find it better to do a small one first, then the pan seems to get into its groove and the following ones cook more smoothly – or is that just me?

Served with a spoonful of the most heavenly, runny organic apricot jam a client had given me but maple syrup or a little honey would do the trick.

Verdict: When I first read the recipe I must admit my first thought was "crispy fried porridge". But my second thought was "crispy fried porridge could taste really good"! The oatmeal did make the pancakes a little damp in the middle, rather than the more cakey nature I'm familiar with. The ground nuts added a lovely texture that complemented the oats.

Overall - a delightful, very filling and healthy breakfast!

Though next time I might soak rolled oats over night, rather than cooking them to see how that works.

What the? Part 2

Any publicity is good publicity, so I’m told. Though in the blogworld there’s a slight division between those who court being noticed (and lavished with free stuff) and those who are a bit like the punks I hung out with briefly in my teens. Their attire would scream for attention but would menacingly spit “What ya lookin’ at?” to anyone who cast a glance their way.

I guess at my heart, I’m just a kid with spiky hair. Notice me but let me decide whether I’ll let you get away with it.

Back in November there was a mass email that some of us dubbed “FYI What the F*ck”. My post about the communique prompted some lively commenting and a volley of off blog emails from the Production Director.

December came around and serendipitously I was eating at Pope Joan (wonderful place but a vegan-unfriendly menu) with another foodblogger when we came across the Holiday Edition of GRAM. What a waste of print was the general consensus but to be fair, I thought I’d wait for another edition or two to give it a go.

I was rather surprised today to see a mention on twitter; it appears one of my posts got "quoted" in GRAM. I hadn’t expected that.

So what is GRAM?

An A3 print magazine style (similar size to Beat etc) food-focused freebie.

Issue 2 comprised of:
14 full sized pages of advertising
21 x 2-3-sentence regurgitation of local food blog posts
1 full paged promo for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival
1 full page “piece” comprising of listing 10 local eateries and the name of the coffee machine they use
1 “about us” style page
8 full format photos (supposedly original as their blurb expressly says “All photography in Gram is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part without the prior consent of the publisher”.)

How they described the publication in the original email:

In the interests of integrity, GRAM 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’.

Does it deliver?

“In-depth pieces”? Sadly there were none. I could be wrong but the image of some work experience kid being plonked in front of a computer with the instructions to scour local food blogs for any interesting content comes to mind.

I'm more than a little confused as to who are the "passionate and knowledgeable local 'authorities'" who wrote the in-depth pieces. Not the person who clumsily compiles the quotes. So are the bloggers the writers they allude to? If so, I hope my cheque is in the mail.

So are these “in-depth pieces” quoting blogs in the manner that other print media or bloggers themselves do, or are they lifting free content for free?

GRAM claimed

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.

Here’s an example from their site of how they do it:

HUXTABLE
131 Smith St, Fitzroy. Ph. 9419-5101
R&H @ Pepper. Salt. Sugar. Spice. found the menu at Huxtable “intriguing”. Deciding on the “plump and lovely” dashi-poached eggs with smoked salmon, and “spectacular” French toast with poached rhubarb, Istra bacon and maple syrup, they weren’t disappointed. In fact they think Huxtable is Melbourne’s best “café to have breakfast”…
Article Source: http://peppersaltsugarspice.blogspot.com

Would I be upset if another blogger quoted me like that?

Apart from the bad writing? To be honest, I’d think it was just utterly lazy. Most quotes are often used in context. For example “R&H loved the French toast (link to post) but it was the amazing Japanese breakfast that sold me on the place”. Then there’d be ORIGINAL content about my own experience.

These “pieces” are not in-depth or add any original content whatsoever but what differentiates GRAM from another blogger writing the laziest post on earth is that the pieces are just mere wrapping to sell advertising.

Verdict

I’m more amused than hugely annoyed about getting a mention. My understanding from the outcome of my extensive emails to GRAM in November were that they would contact me for permission to reproduce actual content but “quoting”, i.e.: a simple link, was ok. I can’t share those emails as they were marked “in confidence”.

Strangely, rather than being cutting edge, my post they spat out was from March 2010. Hardly recent.

I’ve seen no spike in hits, as the mass email suggested:

As a result, GRAMs 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).

NOTE: F*ck off adsense, nuffnang, foodbuzz I don’t want you.

But wait is that a knock at my door? I think it’s a publisher, who saw my blog for the first time today in GRAM and is offering me a 3 book deal!

As to the concept of GRAM?

Will anyone download the Microsoft software needed to scan the codes (I certainly wont)? And who would laboriously type a long url into their smartphone?

Overall I feel sad that so much money has gone into this magazine, that they’ve wasted the time, space and opportunity that could have created something worth of reading. Regurgitating unpaid pieces that other people have written, instead of commissioning talented food writers to create something new is a total waste.

Or just a cheap way to make money from advertising?

30.1.11 Update: Clarification

* As I said, I'm "amused" about my inclusion in this publication.
* I was surprised rather than upset, mainly because I tend imagine any feedback I give to a publicist/marketer et al that is not 100% positive potentially puts me on a blacklist.
* I quite possibly have an overactive imagination, or so I've been told.
* I am not a lawyer, nor am I pursuing one, I have not been plagiarised.
* Academically though, I'd like to know if a publication used it's "in-depth articles" as a sales pitch to potential advertisers - as in "(the publication is) made up of positive, in-depth pieces with attractive photography, written by passionate and knowledgeable local ‘authorities’" and they acknowledged that the pieces they refer to are the blog posts, if they commission the photos but not the pieces - is it misleading or unethical in any way?
* In the two days since the publication hit the street (literally, I found my copy in an unopened bundle getting very dirty, at lunchtime Friday outside a Degraves Street cafe) the post has had one hit from GRAM (hey the work experience kid has to do something :) but in the same period of time it has had four hits via Google, all from outside of Australia, therefor not remotely related to being "quoted".
* Speaking of links, quotes and mentions - GRAM take note, this is a good example of how most bloggers do it.
* Feel free to speculate on how many editions GRAM will run for. They've clocked up two so far. Do I hear advances on four? Was that a five at the back of the room?

7.2.11 Update: Crikey writes about blogger backlash.

Amber Jamieson reports:

Cea says GRAM is now considering reproducing entire blog posts and paying writers for republishing posts after realising the backlash and negativity from the blogging community. Money has been received for ads, says Cea, but adds: “We’re not making money [yet], that’s for sure.”

While I'm a little skeptical about that happening (or if so, at anything nearing market rates), read the full article as there are lots of gems in it, as well as a good round up of what fellow bloggers are saying. The comparison between Saucy Thyme's actual writing and the GRAM rehash is a fine example of what many of us are on about. The GRAM precis written is so badly, who'd be inspired to visit the original piece?

On other matters, I was informed by GRAM last week that my link has been removed without a trace from their website. Though I've not asked for this, I'm other bloggers quoted in the magazine have suggested it.

keeping calm and carrying on: urban survival kit

Just quietly, between you and me, after a couple of weeks off I’ve found going back to work this year a bit of a shock. Instead of the usual gentle plunge into the working year, it’s felt like an inundation.

Perhaps it didn’t help that my first day back coincided with rising floodwaters in Brisbane, where the latest sms from my cousin informed me he was sandbagging his new business and reeling from his insurance broker laughing when he asked if he was covered for flood damage. With an eye on the news and the excellent social media update via #qldfloods on Twitter during my lunch break, my heart felt like it was a thousand kilometres away.

But thanks to the twitter stream it soon became apparent that I live in a totally different world to some of the Brisbane tweeters. I was struck by some updates mentioning they’d rocked up to find empty food shelves at the supermarket and their cupboard at home was perennially bare as they “eat out most of the time and buy on the day if I cook”.

My mum was raised through hard times being a depression era child. Perhaps if she’d been a baby boomer I wouldn’t have done a sneaky audit of the bathroom one day in my teens and counted 24 rolls of toilet paper, 9 cakes of soap and 4 tubes of toothpaste, stockpiled away in the cupboards. Everytime the local stores discounted her favourite brands she’d buy a few extra, just in case.

I miss her old pantry, stupidly sacrificed in a really bad 80’s kitchen renovation, which always seemed packed to capacity. In autumn she’d bottle peaches, apricots and tomato sauce (the later flavoured with dried pimento seeds, unless my mind is playing trick on me). Throughout the year there’d be canned versions of the same, bought on sale, for when her own bottles had run out. There was always many kilos of flours and sugar in the deep drawers where the baking supplies were kept.

In the garage sat the ginormous chest freezer purchased in the 70’s when buying “a whole beast” with a neighbour came into vogue. For years half a pig's head greeted you on opening the freezer, until one day she quietly threw it out. Our family of five chomped through meat at least twice a day but our conventional tastes tended to stop far south of a snout.

The clay soil and challenging weather limited the vegetable garden but in summer there’d be a crop of runner beans and strawberries. Sometimes she'd try something new but our favourite would be the joys of running through rows of corn that would tower over me before the cobs were ready to pick. Throughout the year the rhubarb remained constant, along with curly leaf parsley and a small but proficient lemon tree.

I am convinced we could have eaten well for weeks on the pantry stores and garden, let alone remained clean, if disaster struck. During the odd storm that took the power out, the neighbours would pull their camp stove out and boil a billy for tea. There was no doubt that in the case of a major emergency the locals would pool resources and help each other out.

Here in Melbourne in the 21st century I’m not feeding a family of five but between kitchen, garden and neighbourhood connections I think I could make a fair stab of not going hungry for a month. While the barbecue gas remains on good supply – there’s kilos of dried beans, lentils and whole grains to feed the entire street plus a sizeable pile of canned legumes, tomatoes, packets of pasta and baking supplies. Arepas on the grill with refried beans and fresh salsa anyone?

So what do you stockpile? I’m guessing if you are a food blog reader/writer your own supplies aren’t too shabby.

And while we're at it, what do you have in your urban survival kit?


Urban survival kit


Enough food and water to last a week (for each member of the house)
Canned beans, fruit, fish and vegetables
Dried grains (rice, oats, quinoa etc) and legumes
Raw nuts and seeds, dried fruit (great high energy snacks)

Crackers, mountain bread and other floury goods.
Flours, sugar, oil, sauces
UHT milk/tetra packs of alternative milks


Wind up or battery powered radio (cos the batteries in your smart phone won’t last for long if you’re streaming audio)
Wind up or battery powered torch
Spare batteries
Candles
Matches/lighter
Barbecue or camp stove
Old fashioned landline phone (not requiring electricity)
Basic first aid kit – especially bandages, dressings, antiseptic
At least a fortnight’s supply of any essential medicines (and condoms for those who use them, it’s amazing the amount of babies conceived during the aftermath of disasters!)
Mosquito coils

What would you add?

PS: not a necessity but my friendly organic grocer suggested I stock up on ginger, anticipating a shortage in the near future as it's a Queensland crop.



Or instead you could donate the money to a plethora of flood funds - not just in Australia but around the world

Queensland
Victoria
Pakistan
No specific funds as yet for the Brazil and Sri Lanka floods but Oxfam suggests becoming a 365 Emergency donor

not quite a year in review

New loves
Serendipity sorbet (from downtown Marrickville) – fell in love with their coconut and kaffir lime served with some of those sour cherries in juice from a jar. Their chocolate sorbet wins best dairy-free creamy chocolate hit of the year. Oh and I’ve just discovered passionfruit and chilli – oh my!

Tofu in gingery tomato sauce, definitely the most made new recipe of the year. I’ve done all kinds of variations to add some vegetables to it, all fabulous, though eggplant is still the best for it’s melty texture and sponge like quality to suck up the flavours.

Green coriander seeds. I just wish I could have fresh seeds all year round.

With so many new eateries in my neck of the woods it’s hard to pick a favourite newcomer. Hats off to Munsterhaus for providing casual, healthy food that makes me crave more. I also developed a soft spot for breakfast in the sun outside the quaint Miss Marmalade. Honourable mention to the latest in the Vue family – Café Vue at the Melbourne international terminal. Leaving the country has never tasted so good. Considering the paucity of decent food in the entire airport, let alone when you are held hostage in the departure hall, the luxury and great (though rather rich) food at Café Vue is a gift from the goddess. If you are on a cut-price jaunt, I suspect their breakfast/lunch/dinner boxes beat anything you could get onboard. The toasted olive bread and tuna sandwich that I ate there just before Christmas made it easy to ignore the horror of a meal Air New Zealand attempted to serve up.

Out of town finds– Black Star Pastry (Newtown, Sydney) and the queue-worthy Mamak (Haymarket, Sydney). I suspect I’ll be eating in Sydney even more in 2011, so feel free to tell me your favourite casual haunts in the harbour city.

Falling in Love Again
Best new old friend Annabel Langbein. Despite so much of her food being dairy or meat rich, I loved her program The Free Range Cook for her casual attitude towards cooking and simple recipes – so much so I dusted off her cookbook and actually made the recipes I’d earmarked.

In a similar vein, in a moment of boredom on a visit to my family in NZ, I jazzed up my mum’s chocolate rough recipe and fell in love with a decidedly adult twist on a childhood favourite slice.

Other foods I fell for all over again included kale, New Zealand whitebait, ginger beer and mushrooms on toast.

A couple more “best ofs”
Best experiment – harissa prawns. Homemade harissa paste has become my favourite “fridge fixing” – other than tagines it goes into chilli bean dishes, mayonnaise to accompany carrot fritters and smoked eel but best of all was using to marinate prawns. Drooling in memory of it just typing this…

Best food related meme – most likely the only one I did but I loved Jill Dupleix’s life in 10 dishes so much, I did it myself.

Social media high and low lights
The Foodblogging event of the year was certainly the inaugural Eat, Drink, Blog. A spectacular event, wonderful participants, incredible cocktails and a delightful meal at St Ali. Best of all was hanging out with fellow bloggers and forming new friendships.

Foodblogging meets old media epic fail of the year – how could we forget the evil Judith Griggs and Crooksource?

What I want more of in 2011
Home cooking. I buy fresh, seasonal organic fruit and veg each week. It’s a pity to waste them. I’ve grown increasingly disenchanted with big bang, expensive restaurants over the years. But perhaps that’s because in Melbourne we are lucky to have so many small, understated, quality neighbourhood eateries like The Commoner in Fitzroy and Da Noi in South Yarra. Neither new kids on the block but both provided my favourite dining experiences of the year – the perfect blend of the best company to eat and drink with, waiters who know how to do their job and talented chefs.

What are you food highs of 2010 and what are you hankering for in 2011?

merry eatmas

Back from across the ditch, a place where the wind blows at 170 km/hour (I kid you not). Fortunately Christmas day in Wellington was not a southerly buster, smiling fine weather upon us.

French bubbles, smoked eel, kick-arse prawn cocktails and the ever spectacular chocolate mousse all added a bit a oral enjoyment to the day.

hope you had a good one too.

See you in 2011.

curry with a great provenance

The genesis of ideas fascinates me. Recipes, like family history, have a habit of unfolding, blending and recreating themselves. It excites me to find other people's scribbles and cross-outs in cookbooks (though never, ever in fiction!), a meeting of social anthropology and culinary exploration. It gives me a thrill to find a library book, splattered from a visit to a borrowers kitchen, with a secret message of a substitution or deletion pencilled into the margin.

I’m pathologically incapable of following a recipe exactly. I do my best to honour the spirit of the inventor but when it comes to savoury cooking I really struggle to toe the line if I don’t have all the ingredients. Perhaps it’s sheer laziness that leads me to be so adaptive?

For my final recipe post of the year I can trace back the provenance of the dish. This great curry comes to you from Jamie Oliver, via Reem's adaptation, wih a Food Nazi veganization for good measure.

I don’t own a single Oliver cookbook. I’ve always been ambivalent about his boyish charms, though I admit he’s likable… in a Shane Warne of Cooking kind of way. But what the man excels in is simple, flexible recipes. The Jamie/Reem curry is dead easy and quick as well, which always ticks my boxes.

So I bring you their favourite curry sauce for fish, from Jamie Oliver's Happy Days with the Naked Chef.

Only it doesn’t have any fish in it.

Though it would be very tasty with seafood.

Oh and I changed the flavouring just a teeny bit, with fresh turmeric, coriander seeds, kaffir lime leaves and some palm sugar. I swapped green chillies for red and dropped the curry leaves.

But does anyone know where Jamie got the recipe from in the first place?

My (new) Favourite Curry Sauce
(Quantities for two)

1 tab coconut oil
1-2 tsp Mustard Seeds
1/2 -1tsp Fenugreek Seeds (optional, I think I’ll give them a miss next time)
1 tsp fresh coriander seeds (or dried if you have to)
I tsp of finely chopped red chili (or this preserved version)
2-3 kaffir lime leaves, split in half
1 small onion
1thumb sized pieces of ginger, peeled & coarsely grated
1 thumb sized piece of fresh turmeric
2-3 tomatoes, chopped
200 ml coconut milk
1 tsp tamarind concentrate
1 –2 tsp grated palm sugar
A large pinch of salt
Vegetables, chopped into small pieces
1 block, Tofu – pressed to remove excess water, cubed

Heat a tablespoon of coconut or plain vegetable oil in a heavy based pan. Add the mustard seeds and stir. When they start popping add the fenugreek, coriander seeds and chili, stir some more. Take the onion, ginger and turmeric and chop in a food processor. Add to the pan. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Now add the chopped tomatoes (or even better, whiz them in the already dirty food processor) and you guessed it, stir some more. Add the coconut, tamarind concentrate, kaffir lime leaves and palm sugar. Allow the paste to cook down a little and thicken. Add a pinch of salt and adjust sugar/salt/tamarind as necessary to balance the flavours.

Your sauce is ready to receive whatever you fancy. Jamie/Reem used seafood (which would work especially well with the citrus tones of the kaffir lime leaves) but I was on an end of the week vegetable crisper clean out – so in went carrots, cauliflower and chunks of zucchini. Make sure the vegetables are well coated in sauce. You may need to add a cup of water too loosen as it cooks down. Five minutes before serving add the cubes of tofu and allow them to soak up the flavours.

Garnish with fresh coriander if you want to be fancy.

Serve with rice or roti.

Notes – The curry is a gorgeous brick red colour and the fragrance is amazing. The fresh coriander seeds were wonderful. Keep it subtle and they marry with the other seeds. I had no curry leaves and though I know the kaffir lime gave the curry a different accent it was worth the deviation. As for the sugar, something tasted slightly bitter (maybe I’d scorched the fenugreek?) and the sugar along with the salt (what no salt in the original recipe?!) and the acid of the tamarind corrected the balance.

seven more sleeps!

My Facebook status has belied that I’m limping, rather than frolicking, through these final weeks of the year. This has resulted in making grown up decisions about how I use my energy – consequently I’m not en route to Sydney today to celebrate my favourite de facto uncle turning 80, nor did I make it to best Christmas party of the year.

My state of exhaustion has been both helped and hindered by the following high and low lights of the past week.

1. “Note to self” – tossing mustard seeds in a very hot wok licked with vegetable oil is not a good idea, unless you want to be pelted by an instantaneous explosion of miniature molten cannonballs. Nothing like a tattoo of little burns across ones cleavage to celebrate the festive season! You’d be surprised by just how many mustard seeds quantify a heaped teaspoon, how far they can fly and for how long they reappear lodged in nooks and crannies.

2. Smoothies – I’ve fallen in love with the simplest breakfast on earth. A small, ripe banana augmented with a handful of strawberries or half a mango. My preferred milk is now rice, yes it’s rather thin and insipid but the banana turns it into a thicker substance, creamy with mouth feel. Pomegranate molasses continues to be the magic ingredient; it really lifts the flavour and enhances the fruity tones. Any smoothie without a teaspoon or two of the ruby syrup is lacking by comparison.

3. A drink or two at the Westin Hotel. On the only perfect summer’s day this week, when the barometer hovered around 30 in Melbourne, I met old friends and hung out in the opulent air-conditioned lobby and caught up with refugees from the London winter. Though I swear the waiter forgot the vodka in my VLS, the company and ambience was perfect place to catch up on the last 9 years, while waiting for tardy dinner guest delayed on a trans-Tasman flight.

4. Dinner at Gingerboy, I’m sorry but food wise this was an equal lowlight (though not as painful as the mustard seed tattoo). While I didn’t miss the reflux caused by my first visit there was a serious lack of “wow” through the whole meal. We had fun popping the son-in-law eggs, whole, into our mouths but the vegetarian dish featuring asparagus was bland and starchy. The biggest disappointment was the previously loved corn cakes. Apart from them not appearing until the last dish was served, despite saying “we want lots of corn cakes, give us corn cakes!” enthusiastically when ordering – the sad balls arrived a sunburnt shade of brown, burnt on the outside but damp within. Nothing like the fluffy balls I’d remembered. Waiting staff were fab though, along with the calibre of my dining companions but the kitchen let them down big time.

5. Nibbles and drinks at Gerald’s Bar. How lucky am I to have this bar as my “local”? I don’t know any other “all occasion” kind of place that hits the right note every time, let alone one a short walk from my front door. A quiet drink with my partner while dinner cooks slowly in the oven at home, the perfect end to a night out with overseas visitors, a catch up with my favourite wine, liqueur or coffee snob, a celebration with some close friends, an impromptu dinner at the bar or a quiet table in the back room – Gerald’s manages to deliver whatever I need with ease. The place can be rollicking, packed with high energy on a Friday night, yet perfectly cruisy on others. Last night the place was on a roll but a moment after squeezing through the door one of the bartenders eyeballed us and ushered us to a table for two in the backroom. Perfect for a planned catch up with a friend. The next minute the elusive Gerald appeared from the kitchen door “What can I get you girls*? A G&T? Some bubbles?” No, a perfectly priced rosé and a bowl of freshly fried crispy whitebait. Another glass and some of his delicious smoked salmon and a plate of vegetable pickles. All served with aplomb from the host with the most.

6. Fish burger, hold the chips. The tapas and rosé were wonderful but a few hours later was tweenie hour. No more wine for me, grazing plates had knocked the edge off my hunger but there was room for just a little more. Getting a late table at any of the Rathdowne Street eateries would be pushing it and all we wanted was a small serving of something simple. A brilliant plan was hatched, a fish burger to go from the anonymous looking takeaway place next door. Cooked to order for a mere $7, a classic spongy white bun burger, with a freshly grilled fillet, lettuce, tomato and tartare sauce, piping hot and eaten on my neighbours couch. Feet up, pussycats patted, music playing, water consumed – a perfect end to a hectic week. I’m so glad I conserved my energy, selectively picked and chose my social life.


I might just make it to Christmas after all.

Speaking of which, next Friday will find me trawling the providores of Wellington. I have no idea what I can feed my picky family this year (if only I could import my Melbourne favourites – fresh Aussie prawns, luscious mangoes, Chicken Pantry’s perfect turkey sausages that my father declared “the best turkey he’d ever eaten” and a swag of Noisette mince pies). It will be whatever is fresh and local, seafood and vegetable-wise and if I can unearth my mum’s trusty Kenwood, a batch of chocolate mousse. To be honest, a bowl of cherries, a glass of bubbles and a touch of chocolate is all I need, other than being grateful my rather fragile parents are still here to celebrate another yuletide. How are your (meat-free) Christmas food plans going?



* I’ve now hit the age where being called a girl no longer annoys me, a far preferable greeting than “madam”…a greeting that makes me want to splutter an Ab Fab response of “mademoiselle!”

wikileeks?

Right now I've got a bad case of end of year fatigue causing me to triage my social life severely. Sheesh it's tough being a grown up sometimes.

While there's a great recipe posts brewing (the best vegan curry ever!) all I'm up for right now is to pour a long, cool glass of mineral water, have a lie down and share some vego-political humour spied today at Garden Organics.

solstice giving update

At winter solstice I gave thanks and started an experiment. In gathering my (and your) favourite healthy cookbooks I linked them to a Fishpond (online Australasian bookstore) affiliate program. The promise was to give any profits from affiliate sales to my favourite charity. As an act of faith I donated $200 in advance to the Smith Family’s Learning for Life and I’m glad to say that has almost been met in affiliate sales.

Today, while listening to 774 I caught Ian Thorpe talk about his foundation. Those of you who’ve read my other (ranty) blog may know I’ve had a thing for Thorpie over the years. But all jokes aside, after listening to flipper feet talk I’m proud of what he’s done to encourage literacy in Aboriginal communities. So continuing the theme of giving I’ve donated $200 to his charity. If you’d like to support it too by purchasing books via this Fishpond link or directly through the foundation, good on you.



As for the virtual bookshelf I’m building elsewhere, it’s still a work in progress. The list of things to consume my post holiday replenished energy supplies in the New Year grows ever longer! You’re welcome to continue to add your thoughts on healthy food related reading.

A big addition to my original list is my cookbook of the year, Tony Chiodo’s Feel Good Food.

Feel Good Food
I’ve broken my minimalist rules this year with a small haul of recipe books and Chiodo’s is certainly the healthiest.

Lisa Dempster recommended

The Asian Vegan Kitchen: Authentic and Appetizing Dishes from the Continent of Rich Flavors
I like the idea of an Asian cookbook that avoids mock meats/sauces and focuses on the authentic vegetarian recipes. It’s winging its way to my letterbox right now!

I’m keen to check out Lucy’s suggestion, it's just a pity I didn’t remember it when I ordered the Hema Parekh’s book! But good to see that Fishpond currently have it on sale.

Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking with What You've Got

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The Yoga Cookbook: Vegetarian Food for Body and Mind


Speaking of cookbooks I made an interesting discovery recently. Do you ever fall in love with a book in the shop, bring it home, touch it lovingly from time to time but never really end up cooking anything from it? This year I realized that the key to success is committing to make at least one recipe from the new book within the first week of purchase. This reduces the likelihood that it will languish on the shelf with its recipes mere pipe dreams.

What books are tickling your fancy, culinary or otherwise, this season?

A big thanks to all of you who clicked through to Fishpond in the last 6 months and bought all sorts of wonderful books and electronic equipment via the affiliate link. It gives me a buzz to think that your reading choices are helping some Australian children learn to love words and become readers for life.

Hope you all are keeping your head above water and remembering the spirit of the season.


Update: Lucy added From Spiders to Water Lilies Cambodian cooking for a great cause.

fresh, green and vomit-free!

I came late to the party as far as coriander (cilantro) is concerned.

To be honest I thought the herb smelt like vomit, so why would I want to taste it? The journey from outright disgust to tolerance of this plant has been a long one. It’s only in recent years that I’ve begun to embrace it. So to celebrate this newfound love, inspired by Christina’s wonderful post mid year, I’ve grown coriander for the first time.

Beyond the joy of being able to harvest a bunch of coriander fresh from the garden while knocking up some Asian delight, I’ve patiently waited for the plant to go to seed. In the past when annuals have bolted, I’ve felt a little melancholy. This time my excitement was palpable.

You see it’s the seed bearing umbels that really turn me on. So much of what I cook now begins with toasting and grinding coriander and cumin seeds. How perfect to harvest my own seeds to use after the plant has died? Then my mind sprung to the next logical conclusion, if dried seeds bring me so much olfactory joy, what about FRESH coriander seeds? How cool would they be to cook with?

For the past week I’ve battled torrential rain, the odd swarm of mosquitoes and fretted about locusts, just to harvest my new best friend. The first batch went mouldy, stupid really as I know all about drying herbs. Fortunately there’s been more bounty on the leggy, near dead, plant. My first foray into using my new love was to simply crush a head or two of seeds with the back of a large knife and adding them to a mid-week kedgeree. The seeds lifted the flavour, adding a fresh pungency to the spices.

Have you every cooked with fresh coriander seeds or have an inkling on how you’d use them?