Looking up, listening

The beauty of waking to rain lies in the listening. There is no more delicious sound to be had, tucked up, dry and warm. Blowing small ripples across the surface of my tea, thawing fingers frozen solid by the cold, I watched the rain fall from a grey sky in silent gratitude last week. Winter inspires introspection, and close skies, well, they make looking down rather than up easier on the eye. Earth squelching beneath socked and booted feet; the profusion of green that thrives in this damp cold; a small scruffy dog leading us across the park – there is much to look down on during this season. My neck, however, was developing a crick from the weight of a low, skewed gaze. With the rain that gaze shifted upward, to the cold, dripping sky.

Clearly I have not been looking up enough of late. Rain, in a dry continent, changes everything.

Sunday: Football. Sherbrooke lies in the Dandenong Ranges, a place of steep, rolling hills and small-scale daffodil farming on Melbourne’s fringe. A rectangular field of mud sits atop a steep hill there, too. Drawn by the promise of a little bushwalking, we plunged into a triangular sloping patch of tall trees and scrubby undergrowth on the other side, an hour before play got under way. Wind rushed way up high through the bending branches of slender eucalypts, a lonely, haunting sound deep in winter, one I love. Later, the sky changed dramatically as Oscar played, much better, I am pleased to report. There was bright sun and a small kiss of almost-snow on the wind. Back turned on the action, I watched two kookaburras settle themselves, feathers bristling, on waving branches. Wild. Graceful. A young magpie sang out, announcing their arrival and the dog, clown that she is, balanced on her tiny hind legs to leap at them, barking. Their disdain for her futile attempts made us giggle.

Listening. Hmm. Should have listened more closely to the little voice that said, ‘too fussy’ – you know the one, surely - when approaching a recipe from what is, this winter, my favourite reading. It was delicious, oh yes, but used every pan and all my patience to produce a dish that was scoffed in seven minutes flat. Sheesh. This got me thinking. About formal, fussy dining and the kind of multi-pan, showing-off it involves in home kitchens. Frankly, I can’t be bothered. Better to serve a simple dish cooked well and wow them with a sauce good enough to make them look up and engage, if only to refill their plates, at least once. Yes, please.

Why re-invent the wheel? Walnuts are exquisite right now. From Claudia Roden.

Teradot
A chunky, robust Southern Turkish sauce from Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food. Perfect for dipping crisp, raw veg in to and slathering on falafels. You can make your own, and sometimes I do, but it’s just as easy to go out and buy a good dry falafel mix and doctor it with huge handfuls of finely chopped coriander and parsley.

2 cloves of garlic, chopped
Coarse sea salt
1½ cups (about 125g) of shelled walnuts, chopped
4 tablespoons of tahini
Juice of 2 fat lemons
1-2 tablespoons of boiling water
Large handful of chopped parsley

Pound the garlic with a good pinch of salt for 30 seconds, add the walnuts and continue pounding to make a chunky paste. Blend in the tahini and the lemon juice, then the boiling water, stirring well until smooth. Stir through the parsley and thin with a little more water if you like.

Or, whack the first 5 ingredients in a food processor and whiz away, stopping just short of a smooth paste. You may need to add a little warm water to get things moving around the blade nicely, but you want some texture here. Stir through the parsley. Keeps well in the fridge, but bring it back to room temperature before eating.

Serve with oven-warmed pita breads; a bunch or two of red radishes, quartered; hot, doctored falafels (see recipe intro); shredded lettuce and some thick plain yoghurt.

Simplicity and muscle

Two phrases are scrawled through the pages of my journals, wedged between recipes, sketches and ramblings. Strive for simplicity. Strive for muscle. Written in confident, looping letters, these are big ideas which haunt me in the small, quiet hours of the morning. As though the action of tracing the letters over and over will allow them to seep into daily life. But the art of reduction is as elusive as it is desirable. ‘Strive for muscle’ is a phrase borrowed from Francine Du Plessix Gray, found when rifling one holiday among the pages of The Writing Life. Wrangling words, dancing with language – the ‘muscle’ or strength, simplicity if you will, of which Gray speaks is worth striving for. An idea linguistically stripped back to its essence, one that inevitably spills into other areas of thinking. Simplicity. Muscle. Both require courage.

Harmony, mindfulness. Lately these have taken a grip on my thinking, edging, as we are, toward the introspective darker days of winter. It’s all too easy to be swept up by the confusion of bells and whistles in the kitchen; to be seduced by long lists of the exotic, the obscure. Time to step back. Time to breathe.

Simplicity in the kitchen is about developing intuition and confidence. Listening to the language your ingredients are speaking. How else will they shine? It’s about taking pleasure in small things, like running your fingers through the verdant pots of parsley, beads of water showering your good shoes in the process. Or sipping green tea in the afternoon and watching chickpeas slowly, very slowly, swell in a dish of cold, clear water. Simplicity is washing the dishes by hand because the dishwasher is, sadly, far too complicated. And simplicity is having the courage to place a bowl of homemade smoky eggplant puree on the table with some buttery, slow-cooked chickpeas and happily call it Dinner.

Drifting back, nose first, to the musky fug of chickpeas and bay quietly simmering in the oven, I know instantly what is needed. A bowl of herbal, fresh, flavour-lifting persillade to cut through that richness. Simple. Muscular. We ate in contented silence and both agreed it a meal fit for company. Hunks of crusty bread, or soft fresh pita, optional.

Persillade
Simplicity is persillade. Parsley, from the garden if you’re lucky, washed and carefully dried, pine nuts from the pantry and a clove, maybe two, of garlic. The zest of a lemon sometimes goes in depending on the sort of lift a dish needs, but essentially this is an intuitive thing. A very worthy, but vastly different, substitute for parmesan cheese.

Palmful of pine nuts
1 clove of garlic, peeled
2-3 large handfuls of parsley leaves, washed and well dried

Toast the pine nuts to a pale shade of gold in a heavy based frying pan. Cool on a plate. Chop the garlic roughly, then chop everything together, running your knife back and forth, over and over, until it’s all quite fine.

Smoky eggplant puree
Not quite the classic Babaganoush, this is adapted from Stephanie Alexander’s simple, delicious recipe. Her suggestion to serve with a separate bowl of sour cream into which you have stirred some finely chopped fresh ginger and another, smaller, bowl of sliced hot green chillies is Highly Recommended.

3-4 eggplants
Olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Sea salt
2 lemons, juiced
Tahini, to taste

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Trim and quarter the eggplants lengthways. Nestle them in a single layer in a large baking dish and drizzle with a little olive oil, just enough to lubricate the pan. Roast, turning once, for 40-45 minutes, until the wedges are cooked all the way though. Cool, then peel away and discard the skins. Place the softened eggplant flesh in a colander and press down with the back of a spoon to expel as much liquid as possible.

Puree the eggplant with the garlic, a little salt, the lemon juice and a tablespoon, to begin with, of tahini. Whiz to a puree, adding a little more tahini if you like. Serve topped with a thread of extra
virgin olive oil.

Gum blossom.

Photographed while watching Oscar play football, I'm rather sorry to say, badly.

Poor lad...

Holy Goat: Salad For One

My father’s mother was a consummate gardener. A terrible cook, mind, but blessed with more than a mere thumb of green. Occasionally I catch sight of her in my own reflection when passing the windows, grey hair pulled back, cheeks flushed from weeding. It’s a likeness I’d not imagined before I let my hair ‘go’. Nana grew things in her Sydney garden that other gardeners could only dream about. The ‘drought’, ever-present at the edges of my adult life, seemingly only affected farmers in hers. Her sprinkler system, like many in my 1970’s suburban childhood, would often run all day.

It’s easy to forget, standing at the supermarket dairy cabinet, that farmers make extraordinary daily sacrifices to bring food to our tables. To do so organically, in a country of dry grass and almost non-existent rainfall is very nearly a miracle. Seldom do I mention a product by name – thanks, Naomi Klein - but some things demand attention. Holy Goat organic cheeses, hand-crafted from paddock to plate by Carla Meurs and Ann-Marie Monda in country Victoria, are divine. One episode of Love’s Harvest, a series of half-hour documentaries exploring the pleasures and perils of farming organically, followed their fortunes. Watching them struggle through drought, grain shortages, births and deaths, all the while lovingly tending their herd of charming, cheeky goats, added, for me, extra sparkle to their already stellar range. Organic food has always been more costly – the unpredictable nature of the act itself determines that – but I like to give a little back to the farmer making a red-hot go of it, whenever, financially, I can.

Lately, I’d sensed an air of exclusivity about Organics; the tiniest whiff of snobbery that seemed out of kilter with its grass roots, hands-in-the-dirt philosophy. Not the farmer, mind you, but the (usually chain) retailer. The fusty, earth-worshipping image, much like the vegetarian eating it encompassed, is slowly being replaced by slick styling and clever marketing. But I miss the fustiness; I like the earth-worshipping. Enter a trip, with a friend, to the Queen Vic Market. There, poking around stalls with spankingly fresh organic produce, I sensed the spirit of community that I had imagined gone. A fragment of fustiness, delivered with a sense of style and warmth. Faith, resolutely, restored.

Nana didn’t get to eat at my table, and I was too young to learn any real, concrete gardening skills during her lifetime. Her cooking was a rushed affair because for her, the garden itself held the key to happiness. A simple, honest salad such as this makes an ideal lunch for one. If that lettuce just happens to come fresh from your garden, well, all the better.

Organic leaves dressed with goat’s cheese – for one

The quality of your cheese lies at the heart of success or failure here – choose accordingly. The fromage frais is apparently low in fat. Imagine that? I couldn’t help myself and added some sour cream…

1 hard-boiled (hard-cooked) free-range egg
1 small, organic Cos (Romaine) lettuce
1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon of sugar or honey
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
Small piece of garlic, peeled
Sea salt
1/3 cup (80ml) of Holy Goat fromage frais (or soft goat’s curd)
1 very heaped tablespoon of sour cream
Black pepper

Carefully separate the egg white from the yolk. Finely chop both separately. Wash the lettuce leaves well and dry meticulously. Tear as artfully (or not) as you like.

In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, sugar and vinegar. Crush the scrap of garlic to a paste with a little salt using the flat of your knife. Whisk this paste into the bowl next, followed by the finely chopped egg yolk, the fromage frais and the cream. Thin with a little water, bearing in mind you’re aiming for a pourable/dollop-able consistency.

Arrange the leaves on a plate, in a bowl, whatever you like, pour over the dressing and top with the finely chopped egg white and a good grinding of pepper.

In the northern hemisphere warmer weather is taking a firm foothold but that doesn't stop southern cooks from salad-making. Holler requests your cheesy, salad-y best for this month’s edition of No Croutons Required, an event co-hosted with Lisa.

Entries close on the 20th of May.

Two Lunchbox Salads

Sturdy enough to withstand transit, wholesome and filling enough to help you through the afternoon, you might imagine a salad based on hearty, earthy wholegrains, would make perfect sense in your lunchbox. Ideal. Invincible, even. Sadly, to use a much-abused cliché, not all are created equal. Freshly cooked and quickly dressed? Delicious. Plump grains, bearing even the faintest trace of warmth, tossed in grass-green oil and something sharp, something fragrant, are far more forgiving dressed now than later, stone cold. But that very same salad fridge-cold two days later? Awful. Or so I thought.

Lunch, or more to the point, the question of what to pack for lunch, has always puzzled me. Bringing your own is clearly the clever person’s cash and time-saving solution, but exactly what to bring becomes less obvious once you move beyond soggy sandwiches and leftovers. But leftovers, however obvious they seem, are a very good place to begin.

Toss leftover rice, pilaf or otherwise, with generous spoonfuls of thick plain yoghurt, a squeeze of lemon, salt, crushed garlic and lots of dill. Halve a cucumber lengthways, scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon and slice it thinly crossways. Toss these quarter moons in next. In a separate container, pack some sturdy lettuce leaves, washed and carefully dried, to wrap around spoonfuls of creamy, herby rice. This, I find, stops you eating in front of the computer screen – while not impossible, it is rather difficult to check emails when both hands are actively, pleasurably, engaged.

I now happily roast extra vegetables just so they can be doused in this unbelievably good dressing. Tumbled with handfuls of roughly chopped parsley and/or coriander it’s easy and very, very do-able before you head out. Whip up a double batch over a morning coffee, pour into a clean jar and take it with you for the week. Carrot and celery sticks, those dreaded dieting staples, are lovely dipped or drizzled this way. Tinned dolmades (drained and splashed with both olive oil and balsamic vinegar) and pre-made falafels are good to have on hand. Serve with a tub of hummus or the roughly forked flesh of a ripe avocado. Tinned staples in fact make great salads: Sophie has a wealth of ideas and Stephanie’s own take on one of my earlier suggestions is grand – peruse the comments section while you’re there for a bunch of possibilities well worth exploring.

And then there are these two beautiful wholegrain salads. They’ll need to be made ahead, a quiet Sunday afternoon immediately springs to this mind, but both travel well and last beyond the single lunch. Not wanting to sound like a bore, I think it worth a reminder here to remove your lunch from the fridge about thirty minutes before you plan to eat – fridge-cold anything does neither the digestive system nor tastebuds any particular favours.

Karen Martini’s brown rice salad – 3-4 lunch-sized servings

Karen Martini’s fabulous, nutty salad in her latest offering Cooking at Home is so good it’s worth doubling. I’ve adapted the recipe to suit my needs, but the beautiful flavours are essentially hers. It just seems to improve with age. Frankly, we can’t stop eating it around here...

¾ cup of brown rice (stubby Japanese grains, for preference)
1½ cups of water
½ cup of currants
½ cup of red wine vinegar
½ cup of pine nuts
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
3 onions, sliced into thin half moons
Generous pinch each of sea salt, cinnamon and allspice
1 bunch of parsley leaves, roughly chopped
½ bunch of mint leaves
1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
Juice of 2 lemons

Get the rice on first. Bring the rice and water to a boil in a small, heavy-based saucepan. Lower the heat right down, clamp the lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 45 minutes. Remove from the heat, lid still on, and rest while you get on with the recipe.

In another small saucepan, bring the currants and vinegar to a boil. Simmer for 3-5 minutes, until the fruit is plump and there is just a little liquid left at the bottom of the saucepan.

Toast the pine nuts until golden in a dry frying pan. Remove to a plate to cool, place the frying pan back on the heat and pour in the oil. Add the onions, salt and spices and cook over a low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring from time to time. You want golden threads.

Toss everything together over and over while the rice and onions are still warm. Keeps for up to three days.

Beetroot and quinoa salad – 3-4 lunch-sized servings

Ah, the Wonder Grain. High in protein and easily digestible, quinoa is also rich in minerals. While most wholegrains will take an hour, often longer, to reach tender, toothsome perfection, quinoa is a speedy twenty-minute affair. Think tabbouleh and you’re halfway to understanding both its texture and functionality. Adapted from Rebecca Wood’s Splendid Grain, this is very a pretty shade of pink.

2 cups (500ml) of stock (cube, especially Marigold, is fine)
1 small beetroot, peeled and very finely diced
1 cup of quinoa
1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
Juice and zest of 1 small lemon
Sea salt
1 bunch of chives, snipped with scissors
1 bunch of parsley leaves, chopped
Large handful of black olives, pitted and chopped
A few anchovies (optional), chopped
Thick, plain yoghurt or sour cream
Large soft lettuce leaves, washed and carefully dried (optional)

Bring the stock to a boil, drop in the beetroot, quinoa, oil and half a teaspoon of salt, followed by the zest and juice. Bring back to the boil, lower the heat right down, clamp the lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 15 minutes. Stand, still covered, for a further 3 minutes.

Lift the lid and fork through half of the herbs, the olives and anchovies (if using). Cool completely, and add the rest of the herbs. Pack the yoghurt and lettuce in two separate containers. To serve, wrap spoonfuls of the quinoa in the leaves, dolloped with a little yoghurt or cream as you go. Just as good without the lettuce, but I quite like this ritual. Keeps for up to two days.

How do you ‘do’ lunch?

Dinner for five

Saturday morning: cars whoosh through the rain-soaked street, tyres sending up small waves of water, as welcome a sound to these ears as the velvet voice of Ella Fitzgerald as she filters into the kitchen. The downpour washed away the dust and crept inside, trickling through holes in the roof at first, then wending its way through flickering light-fittings and finally caving in the laundry ceiling. Not even the mad rush for buckets and pots and pans to catch the stuff daunted us. A rare task this and, as such, undertaken with some joy. We’ve been deluged and it’s delightful.

I dawdle through the recipe, lingering over the eggplant, playing with the light that falls on the glossy, oiled cherry tomatoes. We will we be five for dinner, this deliciously grey autumn evening. Golden rounds of eggplant sandwiched with herb-, pistachio- and olive-laced mounds of fresh ricotta; a heap of cherry toms, the yellow ones from the front garden, roasted until their skins split; a gratin of thinly sliced potatoes layered with red onions, sliced to a similar papery-thinness, cooked in a mixture of stock, lemon juice and olive oil. Show-off stuff.

Cooler days, curiously, have made me ravenously hungry for dairy produce. Yoghurt, cheese and sour cream. Standing at the deli counter, armed with a quickly scribbled list that simply read:

Cracked green olives (the ones flecked with red chillies)
Turkish bread (2?)

I came home with things that were definitely not on the list:

A very large piece of unpasturised French Basque blue cheese
Another, larger still, of aged cheddar
A small(ish) triangle of chalky Manchego

A trembling wedge of fresh ricotta, snowy white, also snuck its way into the basket. Like a child unleashed in a sweet shop, I couldn’t stop. Unusual behaviour, this. Wary of the effect on my digestive system and the uncanny ability dairy has to make my nose drip not unlike our leaking home (utterly charmless two days later, I must add) it’s difficult to imagine what, exactly, came over me.

Time to re-think; time to re-adjust. An overhaul in the kitchen is due. There will be some changes around here over the next few weeks as this blog quietly enters its third year. Subtle changes perhaps, but just the shift in thinking that’s required. The world does not need another recipe for roasted cherry tomatoes; instead, all I can offer today is a bunch of glistening baubles, anointed with olive oil and ready to roast to bursting perfection. Not much, I know, but their brightness cheered me no end.

Recipes, and developments, as they come.

Faux meat: Nut roast

‘But surely the most crucial point of all is that if someone doesn’t want to eat meat, the chances are they don’t want their dinner to look like it either. You wouldn’t dream of presenting your Jewish guests with fish carefully manufactured to look like a pork chop. So why wave replica meat in front of someone who clearly doesn’t want to see it?’

Nigel Slater; ‘The Nut Cutlet’, Eating for England

Despite Johanna’s protestations, I think that Nigel makes rather a good point, poking fun, gently, at the sort of vegetarian cookery no longer considered in vogue. Having arrived at the flesh-free party somewhat late, I’ve never quite grasped the notion that replacing meat, with something concocted to look like it, is wise. Besides, I’m more of a legume girl, content to be drawn into the kitchen by what’s seasonal and abundant.

No-one writes about food like Nigel Slater. It’s writing one sinks, blissfully, in to. Later in the same book, he pokes a little more fun at ‘The Slightly Grubby Wholemeal Cook’:

‘Here you will eat healthily…the yoghurt will be goat’s, the chocolate barely sweetened and the milk soya…[the cookbooks] are on the same shelf as the meditation CD’s, the fruit tea and the tantric sex manual’

Mind you, he’s got my pantry eerily right, but the sound of dolphins cavorting through rainforests inexplicably angers me and frankly I’d rather eat Tofurky wrapped in Soy Bacon than spend hours and hours tangled tantrically. Perhaps a foray into faux meat, in light of Nigel’s dubious stereotyping, was worth exploring. I settled on Deborah Madison’s much-lauded terrine from Greens.

Nut roast is, essentially, something akin to the stuffing that steams in the cavity of a roasting bird, minus, obviously, the bird. Think meatloaf and you’re halfway there. A nut cutlet is similar in construction, differing only in size and shape.

This smells like a proper roast while it cooks: incredibly, deliciously, good. It’s substantial, weighty and golden: worthy of presenting at the table with a flourished ta-dah! Madison warns this is heavy, rich fare and she is right. Thin slices, daubed with plenty of chunky tomato and basil sauce are ideal. And if the thought of half a kilo of cheese and all those nuts fills you as much fear as it did me, try to make up for it in the days that follow with truckloads of salad and fruit…

Cheese and nut roast - feeds six or more, with leftovers

Serve with a quick tomato sauce made by dumping two tins of chopped tomatoes into a saucepan with 3 thinly sliced cloves of garlic, a glug of red wine and a sprinkling of sugar. Bubble away until reduced by about one third, add half a bunch of torn basil leaves and serve. Nut roast adapted from Greens by Deborah Madison.

½ cup of brown rice, or a mixture of brown and wild if possible
4 dried shiitake mushrooms
½ cup, packed, of dried porcini mushrooms
2 cups of nuts, a mixture of cashews, walnuts and pecans
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
Sea salt
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 large handful of parsley leaves, chopped
3 eggs
250g (½ pound) of cottage cheese
250g (½ pound) of strong cheddar cheese, grated

Place the rice in a small saucepan and cover with one cup of water. Bring to the boil, lower the heat right down to its lowest possible setting, clamp a lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F) and line a large loaf tin with baking paper.

Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water to cover for 20 minutes. Drain well and de-stalk the shiitakes, then chop the mushrooms. Spread the nuts out on a baking sheet and cook for 5 minutes. Cool on a plate. Chop the nuts quite finely, but not so much that you’re bored. A few chunks here and there don’t matter much.

Increase the oven temperature to 190 C (375 F). Warm the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook the onion and celery until soft, about 6 minutes or so. Add a little salt, followed by the mushrooms, garlic and parsley and cook for a further 2 minutes.

In a roomy bowl, combine the cooked rice, nuts, onion and celery mixture. In another bowl, lightly beat the eggs and cottage cheese, then stir through the grated cheddar. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, combine well and press into the prepared loaf tin.

Bake for 1 – 1 ¼ hours until the top is burnished and golden, the loaf coming away easily from the sides of the tin. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before gingerly slicing with a serated knife.

Am I a convert? Not quite, but I’ll be eagerly awaiting Johanna’s round-up for more inspiration. You have until April the 18^th to have a Neb at Nut Roast.

Out of season

The dramatic drop in temperature is sheer, utter bliss.

Muddled by the heat, these asparagus spears were the first vegetable I grabbed in the cool of the supermarket this morning.

Frankly, they sucked.

Still, the fabric’s quite nice, isn’t it?

Me, me, me: Part 4

Me, about five

Ah, yes, the next (and probably last) ‘exciting’ installment.
Thanks go to Susan – this one was quite fun.

What were you cooking five years ago?

For the first time I was cooking with children in my life. That was challenging. I was teetering on the brink of vegetarianism, having always, always, preferred vegetables to flesh and spent a lot of time reading books by nutritionists (notably Jane Clarke and Annemarie Colbin). Five years ago feels like two minutes ago, so it was, I suppose, very similar food to what you see among these pages.

What were you cooking 10 years ago?

Ten years ago I was poring over clippings of Nigel Slater from English Marie Claire magazine. The casual, produce-driven images that accompanied his seductive words were a huge influence on me and remain so, to this day. Cooking? I did a mean pizza, the sauce heady with red wine and oregano, lifted from those very clippings; a blow-your-socks-off-it’s-too-damn-hot-woman green curry (hey, I was a heavy smoker back then and needed strong flavours to taste anything) and huge cauldrons of Moroccan-spiced lamb shanks for gatherings.

Five snacks you enjoy:

1. Vegemite and tahini on brown rice cakes
2. Crisp apples, when in season
3. Dried cherries and unsulphured dried apricots
4. Tamari roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas), sunflower seeds and pine nuts
5. Vegan cookies…this one and another I’m yet to share…

Five recipes you know by heart:

1. My version of dahl. Perhaps I should write it up?
2. Pasta with fennel, currants, saffron, pine nuts and fried wholemeal breadcrumbs
3. A really lovely, citrussy, quinoa and millet pilaf
4. My grandmother’s Mock Nougat Slice
5. Wine glazed lentils

Five culinary luxuries you would indulge in if you were a millionaire:

1. A 12 month macrobiotic cooking class in Japan
2. My own kitchen (as opposed to the rented one I have become very attached to)
3. Antique copper pans – I love old metal
4. A large, perfectly planned kitchen garden and all the time in the world to tend it
5. An Aga

Five foods you love to cook:

1. Braised fennel is the most beautiful thing to eat
2. Potatoes, Indian style
3. Vegetables I’ve no experience with
4. Legumes in their many, many incarnations
5. Pilafs - ditto

Five things you cannot/will not eat:

1. Chicken – I have never been able to see the point of chicken. Well, a roasted chook I get. But flabby, tasteless chicken breasts?
2. Licorice
3. Things with preservatives – weird numbers and names that cannot be pronounced. Good wine being, obviously, the hypocritical exception
4. Those well-known cola drinks – especially the ‘diet’ varieties
5. Anything genetically modified

Five favourite culinary toys:

1. My (sorry, ‘our’) Japanese Knife
2. Mortar and pestle
3. Toaster…hmm…clutching at straws here…but I do love it
4. Cookbook holder – it’s so bloody useful (thanks, Noel)
5. Wooden fish-shaped vegetable scrubber

Can’t do one of these meme's without Poppy

Play along if you like.

Irritated

Yes. The internet has no ‘gatekeepers’. Yes. The internet is ‘un-edited’. I don’t doubt that yes, somewhere, out there, the internet is littered with a tonne of rubbish.

But really, do we have to be belittled by people just as opinionated as us?

John Lethlean’s words in The Age this week resulted in more verbiage from a growing community of budding and not-so-budding Australian writers on Ed’s blog, Tomato; all of it thought-provoking, all of it relevant, much of it consoling.

Still, I am irritated.

Much of my reading time is taken up by books rather than opinion pieces, so I often have neither the time nor inclination to read them. The politics of food are high on my agenda, but as a subject, rarely make it onto these pages. But when I stumbled across Mr Lethlean’s comment, a small, off-handed one, no doubt intended to be taken on face value rather than as a deeper dig, I felt a little shiver of irritation.

It’s been playing on my mind.

I do not think that I write badly and most certainly do not think badly of anyone else’s words. On the contrary, most people whose work (and let’s face it, it is work) I read take great pride in it and that, surely, is to be applauded. We are a literate and often amusing bunch. I'm happy to read what appeals to these eyes and switch off to the words that do not resonate.

It’s as simple as that.

Confession

Oh, the shame!

After all this time; after all the effort to cook and eat responsibly.

Wasted on 'fresh' chantarelles and beautiful, but aptly named, trompette de la morte. From France.

The food miles. The hideous expense.

I am deeply, deeply ashamed...

Winter

By the time August comes around, the deep winter blues generally start to set in like the weather around us. Kathryn at Limes and Lycopene is writing an inspiring series of posts this month featuring achievable daily hints to help alleviate the blues and get you feeling better about both yourself and your health. Even northern hemisphere residents, now feeling the effects of summer heat will no doubt be keen to get on board. Though six days in already, head over and check out Kathryn’s suggestions for better well-being.

Me, me, me part 2: the books

I've been tagged by Wendy, gorgeous Wendy, from A Wee Bit of Cooking for the Seven Random Things Meme. As I’ve already revealed some things last time around (including a love of dogs we share), I’m going to keep this one slightly more focused on food.

And books. After years of selling and hoarding them, here are seven not quite so randomly selected cookbooks that have made a huge impact on me.

1. Colin Spencer's Vegetable Book by (rather obviously) Colin Spencer

How I love this unpretentious little book.

Spencer makes use of ancient and medieval sources, as well as looking to more 'recent' literature from the likes of Hannah Glasse and Mrs Beeton to provide nutritional insights, gardening tips and ultimately manages to write a book that is at the same time both compelling and utterly, utterly delicious.

2. Plenty: Digressions on Food by Gay Bilson

A multi award-winning memoir about a life lived with food. It’s a complicated and enviably well-crafted book, written with great, great skill. A restrained, playful use of language is coupled with thoughtful and provocative views of not just food itself, but the rituals we humans weave around these things.

Beautiful seems like a much-abused word, but in this case, used in its simplest and most subtle form, it is an apt description.

3. The Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander

What can I say? It’s a bible. Chapters cover alphabetically (almost) every ingredient imaginable, recipes actually work and has an incredibly useful ‘goes with’ column for imaginative cooks. Who’d have thought that kiwifruit go with kirsch? (Surprisingly, they do…)

4. The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel.

Pretty much what everyone who blogs is attempting to do, this diary of a year in Nigel’s kitchen is breathtakingly seductive. Evocative, seasonal light floods the photographs in these pages allowing produce, rather than the cook, to be the star. No-one writes about home-cooked food so damn well.

5. Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons: Enchanting dishes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa by Diana Henry

Lots of meat to wade through yes, but there are real gems to be found in these pages. Much has been written about this book and for good reason - it's inspirational from beginning to end. Chapter titles like Sweet Cloves and Liquid Gold, an exploration of garlic, olives and olive oil, evoke more than just a sense of place. Henry’s introductions in fact hide a wealth of glorious recipe ideas. A book to take from the kitchen to the bedside table and back again.

6. Local Flavors by Deborah Madison

Enough to make a southern hemisphere-based girl green with envy of the bounty of a U.S. farmer’s market. A seasonally-based book, brilliant from beginning to end, this is by far my favourite of Madison’s books. She really, really knows how to cook vegetables.

7. Good Tempered Food: Recipes to love, leave and linger over by Tamasin Day-Lewis

A treatise on Good Cooking. With recipes. Love everything about it, from the photography to the layout, the typesetting and most importantly, the words. Tamasin is a little bit bossy, but don't let that put you off. Hers is a well-developed palate and with impressive literary connections (brother is actor Daniel, father Cecil was poet laureate and a one-time boyfriend was Martin Amis) it is little wonder that she writes so compellingly.

Not going to tag anyone in particular, however, if you feel the urge, consider yourself tagged and join in. Would love to know what books have influenced others, kitchen- or otherwise…

Other people's food

Thing is you see that I collect cookbooks like other people collect…whatever they collect. Point is I had enough trouble keeping up with my reading before I started reading blogs. These are things that have caught my eye of late…

Things I have made that are very, very good:

Rosa’s cauliflower soup. Rosa’s suggestions for garnishes are absolutely wonderful. The apple and vanilla - yum.

Another Outspoken Female’s vegan meal of pumpkin, coriander and chickpeas. The dressing is the best, creamiest, non-dairy thing I’ve tasted in a long, long while.

Susan’s cauliflower ragout.

Things I cannot wait to have the time to cook:

These pita chips, made with Turkish bread. Myriam – yum!

Kathryn’s beetroot curry – can’t wait to try this as a way of taming all that sweetness.

Johanna’s pierogi – never made them, but really, really want to now.

This beautiful salad from Vegan Yum Yum.

Almost everything (bar, of course, the meat) from Ceviz’s wonderful blog about Turkish food. These look incredible and so do these.

This beautiful quinoa soup from Lisa.

This incredible granola.

And this cake from Cindy at ‘Where’s the Beef?’


And lots more too. So much food...so little time.

Ricotta

breakfast

Or how I broke my week of (attempted) Auyrvedic eating with home-made cheese.

Don’t really know enough yet about the Auyrvedic tradition to go into great detail (I’m reading this book on and off and learning a little – check out the authors hilarious hippie name). What I can tell you is that it’s a system of health and well-being roughly 2000 years older than Traditional Chinese Medicine. Auyrvedic medicine has been a work in progress since about 3000 BC. Now that’s a long time. Predictably perhaps, given my passion for cooking, in Auyrvedic terms I’m a Kapha. I am built for endurance. And I love to eat. No surprises there.

But after a week of eating fairly austere meals, the kind that do you no end of Good, I wanted something ‘forbidden’.

Cheese.

Fresh ricotta, by which I mean the real thing - the kind sold in thick, cake-style wedges by good delis rather than the stuff in the supermarket fridge - isn’t always easy to come by. Certainly not as easy as many cookbooks suggest. Much to my surprise, it’s stupidly easy to make. Twenty-five minutes later you’ve got fresh, creamy curds of ricotta.

And with the boys here for a full month (teenage stepsons, the kind that voraciously swoop on food the moment they return from school), I am happy to say that it will not just be me eating this. They eat everything. As you can see from my breakfast shot, this is a perfect, spread thickly on toast with one of those French jams made without sugar.

May I have a small rant? I hate homogenized milk. Why homogenize the stuff? Just another process that a machine has taken away from us. Best way to homogenize milk? Shake the damn bottle. Simple as that.

Fresh ricotta – makes about 400g
Not everyone lives near a great deli. This is easy, and though surely it’s not authentic, it is at least, very, very good. Don’t be tempted to use low fat milk – it simply won’t work.

2 litres of full-fat milk, organic and unhomogenized if possible (I used half goat's and half cow's milk)
500ml of buttermilk (has anyone seen an organic one?)
Pinch of sea salt

You’ll need a few bits of equipment to get this right as well:
A sugar thermometer
A large colander
Muslin or cheesecloth, enough to line the colander with about 4 layers
A large non-reactive pot or saucepan (i.e. not aluminium or copper)
A rubber band

Rinse the muslin in cold water. Line the colander with it and set over the sink.

Pour the milks into a large, non-reactive pot. Add a pinch of salt. Turn the heat up to medium-high. Using a stiff rubber spatula, gently stir the mixture, scraping the bottom of the pan as you go to prevent scorching.

When the milk has warmed up to about blood temperature, stop stirring. As the milk heats up lumps will begin to rise to the surface – these are the curds. Very gently scrape the bottom of the pan from time to time to stop any sticking to the base.

Take out your thermometer. Once the milk reaches about 80 degrees Celsius (between 175 and 180 F), the curds and whey will start to separate (the curds will be fluffy and white; the whey like cloudy water beneath them). Remove from the heat immediately.

Using a slotted spoon, gently ladle out the curds into the prepared colander, starting on one side of the pot. You must do this slowly and carefully to keep the curds as thick and ‘whole’ as possible. Gather up the corners of the muslin, secure with a rubber band and tie the whole lot to the tap to drip away. Leave totally undisturbed (no squeezing!) for 15 minutes, or until there is no more dripping whey.

Transfer to a container and refrigerate for up to 1 week.

Planned: A beautiful, layered terrine with red peppers and carrots for the weekend and a lasagne. Might even make my own pasta sheets.

I’ll get back to that book on Monday.

Happy New Year to all

The new year is upon us and with it much expectation for the year ahead. Resolutions are made with the best of intentions, usually in the heat of the moment and rarely kept beyond the first few days of January. I, like many people, used to make bold resolutions that seemed achievable on the night, but in reality were bound to fail. How many people promise that their December 31st midnight cigarette will be the last, only to need one the following morning to cope with the inevitable hangover? Thankfully in the last few years I have vowed to make resolutions that are achievable, most notably the making of my bed every day. And you know what? It works.

But I am getting bolder again. This year I want to change a few things that will benefit all aspects of my life. So here goes:

1. Avoid alcohol during the week.
2. Eat less dairy.
3. Write every single day.
4. Walk, rather than drive, whenever possible.
5. Buy second hand whenever appropriate – there’s enough stuff already in circulation around the world, so why buy more?

The weather is hot. Too hot. Today’s predicted top temperature in Melbourne is 39 degrees, and it looks unlikely to drop below 30 until Sunday. The fires that are ferociously tearing through the country areas of Victoria (and in other states as well) serve as a reminder that as the planet warms up, all need to contribute to creating a cooler world. I am sick of hearing people talking about their ‘small’ contributions to helping the climate, as though turning off lights in rooms that are not being used outweighs the owning of a huge petrol-guzzling 4WD (I have overheard such conversations being had…)! Small contributions can be beneficial, but there’s more to be done, and we’re all going to have to take bigger and bolder steps. And how much ‘stuff’ does the average person need? Accumulation of things is high on my list of pet hates, something I intend to deal with this year. My friends Jo and Ian in Sydney have furnished their beautiful home with found objects – the refuse of others, lovingly repaired and perfect suited to their exceptionally refined and quirky taste. They have, so to speak, stepped out of the cycle of purchasing. Something worth aiming for, nes pas?

No food this entry – too hot to care too much – but am working on getting something out there soon. Something cooling with some luck.

Homework - again

The 'Food as Medicine' course that I am doing requires that, as the final assessment, you present a vegan-friendly dish to the class. It is, of course, group work - groan - and there's always someone who can't turn up isn't there?

Our group of five have all written our assignments around the ingredients given to us by the sixth member, a bloke who wanted to make a wanky panna cotta with agar (a seaweed-derived gelling agent) and honey. Well, it's all due in 10 days or so and guess what? Still no sign of the recipe or the bloke! So I am searching for alternatives madly on the internet. I have had some luck, but don't you think that you'd have the decency to at least answer phone messages or e-mails? What an idiot...

I am a good cook, so can probably come up with a simplified version of what I think he was trying to make, but really. This guy was so keen to tell us just how 'flat out' he is (pregnant wife, full-time job in a restaurant and full-time study) but I am convinced that he is just a bad manager of time.

Oh well, now that is off my chest I feel much better. Phew!

Homework...aaarrrggghh!

Last year was quite an important one for me. I had been a children's bookseller for longer than I care to remember and had hit a wall. I had been doing the same job, in one form or another, in Sydney since I left Art School and when I met the Artist, who happened to live in Melbourne I was happy to make a change, both in moving and career. But guess what? It's hard to extricate yourself when you are not sure where you want to go. So I found another book shop or two, but it was no longer fulfilling and when I think about it, I hadn't actually read or enjoyed anything other than cookbooks for about five years. My mum and I adore cook books. My employers are passionate about food (well one of them is!) and so are a couple of the other staff, particularly the gorgeous Cath and when we talked it was often of food. I've never enjoyed work so much!

So I found myself with a guilty passion for food writing, but felt as though I should actually be following my first love - art. I tried, but failed (again...) and the Artist finally convinced me that it's okay to write.

And what do you write about? What you love. What you know. What you want to learn about...and that's what this blog is for - it is a way of ensuring that I write a little, every once in a while.

And one of my favourite aspects of food is healthy and nourishing food. So I've started, as of February this year, learning about Food As Medicine and am studying at a college in the city. I am looking at my homework right now and thinking that it's all a bit too scientific. I love food, and breaking it all down into scientific names and proteins, macro- and micro-nutrients (among other things) is a little, well, off-putting. It is making me realise that food needs to be seductive, luscious and enjoyable. Wholefood is where my heart is and it's key to improving your health and energy, but it can't be scientific - it's gotta be sexy.

I am reading the work of Annemarie Colbin, an American who writes about nutrition, but with an earthy, inspiring voice and she is making me see food in a different way. Her recipes, along with Nadine Abensur's and Tamasin Day Lewis' writing have had a profound affect on my own cooking. So this blog is where all of that learning will come out it we're lucky.

Soon I'll progress to pictures...ooohhhh...and it will, with any luck, start to look good! And you know what? I am enjoying reading again!