Toasted

senza melone!

2009-04-03T19:28:00.003+11:00

Toasted has been on a long hiatus for a number of reasons, the most boring of which include job-hunting and studying (although the ability to do both of these things at work doesn't really leave any excuse). Then there's the problem of cooking less interesting things due to lack of creative stomach time (that's the time when you sit at work so utterly bored that you think about all the culinary possibilities of, say, a pomegranate, and then go home and create some wondrous, bejewelled dish).

But less cooking time has also meant less food-reading and more non-food-reading. And more non-food-reading means finding morsels of gastronomic intrigue in unexpected places. The snippet that moved me from the couch just now to share this with you is by Nick Hornby, English author of Fever Pitch and A Long Way Down (and other books). Hornby wrote a sort-of book review column for an American journal called The Believer, which was as much about the experience of being a reader (including buying loads of books you don't really intend to read) as the books themselves.

In his April 2004 column, Hornby penned the following fabulously dry, absurd metaphor:

'Like a lot of writers, I can't really stand my own writing, in the same way that I don't really like my own cooking. And, just as when I go out to eat, I tend not to order my signature dish - an overcooked and overspiced meat-stewy thing containing something inappropriate, like tinned peaches, and a side order of undercooked and flavourless vegetables - I don't want to read anything that I could have come up with at my own computer.'

The Complete Polysyllabic Spree

Viking 2006

I have to say, I found this hilarious. It's possibly because JG is a big fan of tinned peaches, and that means soggy, orange cheeks are just as likely to turn up with ice cream as with lamb or fish. And it's not just a domestic fetish; we can't go camping without tinned peaches either. JG's camping trip is incomplete if he doesn't get to eat a tin of peaches for breakfast, cold from the esky. (I can highly recommend this as a hangover cure, but not as highly as sausages.)

Peaches are not the only fruit allowed to crossover into non-dessert cooking. Pears sneak in, as do grapes, and not just with cheese or salads. They can also be found lurking under grilled fish or roasting with duck or pork. Additionally, I believe I also saw JG eating fish fingers and pineapple in the same bun, but I may have been delusional. And all of this is totally acceptable and frequently delicious (though not pineapple, obviously); it's just that I never really got the fruity-salty thing. Call it an unsophisticated palate, but in the early eighties when my mother started pouring tins of apricot nectar over her roast chickens, I got very confused. Shouldn't chicken taste of chicken grease and lots of salt? And shouldn't the potatoes also taste like chicken grease and lots of salt? Who thought they should taste like apricots? I know, half the world thinks that. Pilafs, biryanis, tagines - there's lots of fruity-salty going on. Proscuitto e melone is another one - a possibly not-properly-Italian concoction that was fashionable when I was a child - and led to one of my earliest Italian phrases: senza melone. Maybe I'll get it when I'm older. Like about 84.

Sicilian caponata

2008-10-20T16:50:00.004+11:00

Fresh from a Mediterranean holiday, VB & JG are sporting real tans and a renewed appreciation for artichokes and eggplants. Not generally vegetables you can get terribly excited about in other parts of the world, these two plants are an interesting contrastive metaphor for the present-day capitals of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

In Naples they are treated simply. Artichokes are trimmed and steamed or boiled, then dressed in oil and allowed to taste only of themselves, the artichoke's natural water-soluble acid cynarin producing a lasting sweetness in the mouth and contributing to the flavour of anything eaten afterwards. Eggplants are full of flavour, bitterness and a smoky spiciness. Unlike Australian eggplants which are not generally flavoured enough to require the debittering process, Italian eggplants are usually always sliced and salted, left for an hour to allow the salt to draw out the bitter juices, then washed and dried before cooking. In Naples, they are then simply fried, or battered and fried.

By contrast, in Palermo, artichokes are usually prepared with stuffings containing combinations of the favourite flavours of the island: anchovy, orange, pine nuts, oregano, raisins, fennel. Eggplants are rarely served in the plain Neapolitan manner; the simplest version we found was melanzane 'alla parmigiana', a sort of free form version of a baked eggplant parmigiana, the fried slices topped with tomato sauce and grated cheese. But possibly the most elaborate treatment for eggplant is caponata.

Peter Robb, in Midnight in Sicily, his thoroughly intriguing account of digging around Sicily for the real history of the Mafia, finds caponata not just on menus, but in literature too. Ruminating on comments made by the writer Leonardo Sciascia about a painting of Palermo's Vucciria market by Renato Guttuso, Robb writes

"Sciascia had mentioned certain sweet and savoury dishes that contained everything, where the savoury merges with the sweet and the sweet into the savoury. With their suggestion of a gorgeous fantasy anchored in a palpable sensuous reality, something out of the Arabian Nights, the words were wildly romantic and at the same time domestic, familiar. What was Sciascia talking about? Then I remembered caponata." (1996, p333)

He knew caponata from Naples, where it's more like a fish soup spooned over stale bread, described by Elizabeth David as "a primitive fisherman's and sailor's dish", but this is not the same as caponata on the island, which is a celebration of vegetables doesn't necessarily include any fish.

"It was only when craning over a neighbouring table once, under the fluorescent lights of the Horse Shoe, through the flying bread and the slamming plates and the wine-splashed paper cloths, that I realized caponata in Palermo was something very different. It was the colour that struck me first. The colour of darkness. A heap of cubes of that unmistakably luminescent dark, dark purply-reddish goldy richness, glimmering from a baroque canvas, that comes from eggplant, black olives, tomato and olive oil densely cooked together, long and gently." (Robb: 1996, p334)

Sicilian caponata

3 large eggplants, cut into large dice

1 onion, finely chopped

3 celery stalks, including leaves, chopped

4 peeled, chopped tomatoes (or 1 can)

1/2 a cup Gaeta or any black olives (pitted or not, as you like)

1/2 a cup raisins

1/4 a cup pine nuts

1 tablespoon capers

4 tablespoons white vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

salt & pepper

olive oil and vegetable or peanut oil

Fry the onion and celery in olive oil until soft and fragrant. Add raisins, capers and pine nuts, stir for a minute, then add the tomato, olives, salt and pepper. Cook this thick sauce gently while frying the eggplant.

In the vegetable or peanut oil, fry the eggplant pieces until cooked and golden. They can be prepared with or without debittering (see above for method). Add salt to the frying pan if not debittering.

Set the eggplant aside to finish off the sauce. Stir the vinegar and sugar into the tomato and celery mixture, cooking for a few minutes. Add the fried eggplant, mix gently and then remove from the heat. Usually this is served as a starter at room temperature, when the flavours have melded nicely.

This quantity makes a large pot, but it keeps well in the fridge for 5 days.

Numerous variations in other references include octopus, lobster, swordfish, grated bottarga (dried tuna roe) and anchovies, almonds, orange juice and grated chocolate.

The Vucciria market in the heart of Palermo, a shadow of its past glory

bouillabaisse and snake oil

2008-07-19T20:55:00.006+10:00

since I was lucky enough to retrieve this correspondence from Google's voracious spam filter before it was recycled into a binary spam-and-egg quiche, I have published here PJ's letter concerning fond memories of his old friend's rambunctious gastric afflictions and associated antidote dependence.

thank you for your kind flattery, PJ, at least on my behalf. methinks, however, that perhaps JG will be underjoyed at the references to his former profligate ways with the booze and falling asleep on pizza, awaking to eat the drool-soaked leftovers, night-time attacks on other peoples' refrigerators, and the wanton theft of JP & Blackadder's milk. (While I much admired Blackadder's elaborate ruse - hiding a morning stash of milk the night before in a cereal bowl concealed in the back of the refrigerator and covered with a plate - I found this time consuming. After trialling an untenable plan involving small packs of UHT milk hidden in secret locations in the pantry I have had much success with simple threats and fulmination.)

Dear food tragics,

And tragic be thy name. I found myself dumbfounded, and I was not alone. For while I was singularly impressed with the obvious writing talents of VB and her even more obvious intelligence, I was astounded by the writer's naivety.

It concerns her sidekick JG. I was at once struck by this fellow's resemblance to a travelling snake oil salesman's assistant I once witnessed in my youth. The uncouth fellow would stand in front of the crowd while the salesman would hold forth on the evils of drinking and binge eating. He would stand hunched over, scratching his arse, farting and belching with particular force and thumping his chest in an obvious sign of indigestion distress. The salesman would then hold up a bottle of "Bubba Ho - Tep's Health Elixir" to the crowd, pour a good wack of it down the expectant throat of the stooge and then wait for the orders to roll in as the sick and indigestant chap is miraculously cured.

"What the?" I hear you say, which is not totally inappropriate given the likeness (or Ikeness as I prefer to call it when two people are thought of in the same breath, like Ike and Tina or Rove McManus and this JG bloke) of the afore mentioned comedy tragic to our hero. Well, anyway, the point of all this is, simply, this. Do not lay the blame of unwellness on a dodgy muscle and therefore by very association the cook, but rather, look to JG himself. I suspect he has not chewed the muscle in question with due diligence and the customary required 42 times in order to prevent indigestion and general stomach malaise. Cure him I say with some 21st century snake oil,"Quick-eze", encourage thorough mastication (his forté you may mistakenly think) and the indigestion should, unlike Macarthur "not return".

Yours, blah blah blah.

on the shroom

2008-06-27T11:36:00.008+10:00

some time ago I had the pleasure of partaking in 'the black soup', a herbal concoction made from bark, roots and other bits of plants for which the cook had no English translation, and I, bereft of Chinese knowledge beyond ni hao, also cannot name. the soup, a recipe from EC's mother, has a reputation for health, healing and restoration; it's potent, and shouldn't be eaten too often. it also contains fungus. that night EC treated us to other fabulous mushroom dishes, since we're both confirmed fungus addicts (someone needs to restrain this woman when she gets her hands on truffle oil, and I know what she means). and so the reciprocal mushroom feast was born.

i'm hooked on the great mushroom dishes of autumn in Italy and Spain. hazelnuts and chestnuts and all things bronze, brown, gold and, well, mushroom coloured come together with rich, earthy flavours. dried things become useful again, as the burst of summer freshness wanes. I start thinking about polenta.

cooking polenta for the uninitiated is a bit of risk, especially when you tipsily preface the dish with
'most Italians won't even eat this stuff',
and your guests wonder why the hell you're cooking it. but it makes a wonderful pillow for mushrooms gently cooked in butter, garlic and a little sweet white wine or vermouth, and a scattering of roasted hazelnuts. it's even better with taleggio and buttery sage folded through the corn, as anyone who's had the pleasure of polenta at Café di Stasio will attest.

the two starters preceding this rich dish were also rich and heavy; great in small amounts, and a tribute to all things cheesy and fried. probably my favourite mushroom morsels, we had a variant on my family's recipe for stuffed mushrooms, and Frank Camorra's mushroom croquetas.

the stuffed mushrooms are beautifully simple to make; the croquetas are fiddly, finicky, messy, and likely to fail. they are, however, entirely delicious if successful, and therefore worth trying.

Stuffed mushrooms

preheat the oven to 200°c.
cut the stems out of whatever size and type of mushroom you desire, and lay them gills up on a baking tray.
in a food processor, blend a mixture of torn bread, feta cheese, crushed garlic, olive oil and thyme, oregano or parsley.
while the mixture shouldn't be runny and should hold it's shape when baked, it may need to be moistened with a bit of yoghurt, milk or water. other cheeses can be added for flavour.
fill each mushroom top with the stuffing mixture and bake for 20 - 30 minutes, until the mushroom is cooked and the stuffing is golden on top.
the mushrooms can be stuffed and refrigerated for some time before baking if you need to prep ahead of time; it can be quite helpful in softening the mushrooms and aiding the cooking process as the oil permeates the mushroom and prevents drying.

Mushroom croquetas

start at least half a day in advance, or the day before.

chop your desired mushrooms into small cubes. a kilo of mushrooms will make about 16 croquetas, as a rough guide.
fry the mushrooms on a medium heat in oil, or a combination of oil and butter, with some finely chopped onion or shallot, bay leaf, pepper and salt. the aim is to cook the mushrooms down until they begin to reduce in size, some moisture evaporating to give a reasonably dry result.

the mushroom mixture is then bound in a very stiff béchamel base:
melt a few tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, and add a few tablespoons of flour. stir this mixture occasionally and keep at a low heat for about 10 minutes, until the flour is 'cooked' but not browned.
add the mushroom mixture, stirring well and ensuring that the flour begins to absorb liquid. add milk in small pours, allowing for absorption each time.
keep working over a long, slow heat, until you have something slightly more fluid than dough. it will firm a little when it cools, but it will need to be handled in order to form the croquetas. too much liquid makes this impossible.

add plenty of nutmeg and taste. it doesn't take much to lift the flavour of the mixture if it seems too bland; adjust with salt, pepper and nutmeg. add finely chopped garlic and grated parmesan if you want a slightly more Italian version, however the pleasure of these fried morsels is in the subtle earthiness of the fungus, spiced with nutmeg and bay.

refrigerate the mixture for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

shape into croquetas, crumb each one, and set aside until you're ready to fry.
deep fry, or shallow fry and turn over until they're golden all over.

watching Frank Camorra's crumbing method on Food Safari was quite helpful- keeping one hand away from the egg and therefore crumb-free for the dry stages really reduces the frustration of crumbing.

VB & JG's massive junkfood adventure

2008-05-27T14:26:00.006+10:00

I've always had a thing for pies. my early school memories are largely confined to the canteen and the large plastic tote that used to arrive in the classroom at 12:10pm, carrying brown paper bags filled with hot dogs, pies and sausage rolls. once when I was in Grade 2 I wrote my lunch order on the bag before school while my mum was counting out the change. I inadvertently wrote 'suace' instead of 'sauce'. I got laughed at when I put my bag in the tote. I don't even remember liking sauce, ever, and certainly don't like it now. thus the challenge is finding a pie or sausage roll that tastes good enough to go naked. unfortunately, Four'n'Twenty is not that pie.

playing my part in Saturday's boozy football events planned by JG and friends, I went to my second football match ever (I've calculated since I'm 31 that's one match every 15.5 years. I will not need to attend another one until I am 46.5 years old). I was secretly only there for the pie, and it was so disappointing. although Four'n'Twenty seems to have improved on the gristly bits we complained about as kids, they've given up on the flavour. I didn't feel like I was eating a coronary-inducing cow-in-gravy-in-pastry like I was expecting. it wasn't even salty. it was a bit... nothing. JG tried to re-educate me on the sauce issue, but I'm afraid I retain my ignorance- it doesn't improve the experience at all.

and after all the beer and singing and dancing and hooting we left in search of more beer, and since most other people seem to think pies give you indigestion (and take up beer space), they hadn't eaten, so we had chips and Twisties. this was turning into one big canteen day for me, since I've not really dug the junkfood much since the age of twelve (which you'll notice coincides with acne and stretchmarks for some people). and then everyone was still hungry so the only thing left to do was order pizza.

Domino's Tony Pepperoni comes highly recommended by my sister, so it was an obvious choice. the other was something involving ham, bacon and pineapple, since I am a pineapple-hating fascist and JG's brother had already admitted to pineapple sympathies. I wanted to weed out the others; as I suspected they were many. Tony Pepperoni with his fabulous salami did not fail to impress.

cut to after the scene after an inebriated CM was safely bundled out of the apartment and into the elevator by his friends, who were under strict instructions from his big brother JG not to attempt to take him to the casino. we'd cleaned up the broken glass, empty cans and bottles, and discovered that there was no leftover pizza. we finished off the last of the Twisties (why stop now?) and sat down with a beer in front of the TV. an advertisement for McDonald's explained that they now make the burgers to order. while I was pondering the obvious merits of a not-squashed burger, JG suggested it out loud. and so we stumbled out into the carnage of Elizabeth St on Saturday night, picking our way down to 'the Beirut end', through the silver dresses and white shoes, girls freezing without jackets, boys with big hair and no arses to hold up their skinny jeans, all of them eating burgers or fries. it was Munchies Mecca, and it was grotesque.

"I'm not sure we should be here" said JG, queuing up nonetheless.

"What kind of burger do you want?" he asked, at which point I backed out of the plan.

"I'll just have some of your fries".

he ordered two burgers anyway, which indeed were not lurking, pre-made, anywhere to be seen, and we made our way home.

back on the couch I discovered my second disappointment: I remember the fries tasting like something and now they tasted like nothing.

"Is it wrong to add salt to the fries?" I asked JG, knowing it truly was.

the Big Mac with bacon was exactly as I remember the McDonald's beef burger experience, but with added ideology (a drawing of a cow on the box - beef comes form cows? no way! - and a map of Australia with Xs - the beef comes from here and here - where? is that, like, Sale? or Deniliquin? this map sucks. oh, and a nutritional information panel - stop it, you're scaring me.) in short, the beef experience was predictably underwhelming.

the chicken burger, however, was a surprise, possibly because I've never eaten a McDonald's chicken product (as far as I can remember). it was an irregular-shaped crumbed thing, with Tatsoi salad on a water split bun (no, I have no idea either, but it was a nice looking bun with flecks of wheat bran on top and a split down the middle, like a little bum crack). the mayonnaise let the ensemble down, being nothing more that white coagulated fats and fluids, sans flavour, but overall this burger had taste. not so great that I couldn't wait another five years for my next attempt, but better than I expected.

the undisputed glory of our foray into the world of convenience food was Tony Pepperoni. he might even visit again sometime. McDonald's was in second place but won't be asked back for a while. Four'n'Twenty was sadly lagging way behind and needs work, but given my fondness for pies I'm inclined to search out a good pie and pitch it against Tony Pepperoni, undisputed winner, in a junkfood rematch (just without the chips, Twisties, McDonalds and so much beer).

and I'll spare you the scenes depicting the resulting three days of various gastric discomforts.

Schrödinger's trout

2008-04-17T12:46:00.017+10:00

hats off to the man who first smoked a fish, I thought, while savouring the smoked ocean trout at Tetsuya's, though I wasn't wearing a hat, and the first fish might've been smoked by a woman. the essence of the dish was, of course, the amazing quality of the fish itself, but there was a tune to be heard underneath; not some kind of adornment or token aside, but the symphony of additions which made the dish sing.

to imagine the process of this creation, we need to make a bridge from here, where the chef stands with his main ingredient, to there, the place where the masterpiece is gloriously complete. the same could be applied to a song, a poem, an architectural form. a genesis appears in the mind of the artist: the structure around which the piece will be built.

unlike Shrödinger's famous thought experiment, this scenario does not use a cat, but an artist and a trout. let's call the artist Tets. we cannot see inside Tets's neural pathways while he imagines the tian of smoked ocean trout, so we cannot know what he is thinking. this may be irrelevant anyway; he may be designing with his tongue. let us assume that Tets is in bed late at night, awake, and feeling vaguely unsatisfied with a meal he's eaten some hours before. slightly overcooked pasta, salad leaves a touch wilted instead of perfectly crisp, the texture of the duck skin somehow unexceptional, perhaps the wine did not come to sing in the glass as he expected. he takes a sip of water and lies back, allowing his mind to wander. pressing his tongue against his palate, he begins to think about Petuna ocean trout, a fish with which he's had great creative success. he thinks about smoking the flesh at a low temperature so that the protein sets but is still mostly translucent and glowing, not the opaque orange of cooked trout. the oils stay inside the flesh rather than melting away, creating a velvety feel in the mouth, and conveying the sapid smokiness across the tongue and the soft palate. the flesh is diced into tiny cubes, so the tedious intrusion of the teeth is almost unnecessary.

the fish is very satisfying in the imagination, but what about the other stanzas?, thinks Tets. he has an unfinished poem, just a chorus without verse. what makes the smoked trout sing? standing half way across the conceptual bridge, he remembers the words of his first year painting lecturer: "Don't ever use colour straight from the tube", he warned, with a smirk which suggested it might be very bold and clever to do just that. but the delicately smoked trout ensemble is not a Peter Booth painting, Tets thinks, so restraint is sage advice.

he imagines the flavours which must whisper rather than shout at the taster: shallot, tarragon, aniseed. a tiny brush of these substances creates a barely perceptible yet persistent melody in the masterpiece; too much and the dish is crushed. time must meld these notes with the fish before Tets finishes the piece. we have almost reached the other side when he shapes the tiny, perfectly flavoured cubes into a flat disc. it is topped with a perfectly even layer of black pearls of Avruga caviar: herring roe produced in Spain, with a milder, somewhat citrus flavour, compared with that of sturgeon roe. in the middle of this new sea of black he places a specular sphere of whiteness, an orb of shiny, set scallop mousse. inside the orb is his crown, his sauce: the yolk of a quail egg. he envisages the faintly fishy whiteness giving way to a rich, yellow spill, a minute spread across the canvas. he stands at the other side, white plate in hand; the creation he imagined is complete.

supposing one wanted to apply this thought experiment to the creation of a dish in one's own kitchen, without insight or instruction from the artist. not quite like working in Rodin's studio, where one can work with an exact mould or map, nor quite as bad as playing Deep Purple on air guitar, the adaptation might look like this:

go to the supermarket after work and stare with contempt and disbelief at the queue as you walk in the door, but then gravitate zombie-like towards the fridge section anyway. select a 100g pack of smoked salmon. this strangely lurid flesh vacuum-sealed against slimy, gold cardboard isn't Petuna ocean trout, but it still tastes pretty good. choose a fennel, with some leafy fronds still intact, and a spanish onion, and some cream. this experiment assumes you have garlic, butter, lemon and pasta at home.

since Tets's trout was designed so that the flavours would meld with the fish, start this part before looking for adequately sized pots, pans or pasta, but not before the crucial step where you are instructed to pour wine or open a beer. dice the flesh finely and place it in a bowl. mince half a medium clove of garlic to a fine paste, omitting salt as the flavours must remain subtle. halve the onion and cut two thin slices from the widest part, dicing them finely. pick about five fronds from the fennel top and chop finely, and peel about one square centimetre of zest from a lemon: mince up very finely. add all of this to the salmon, mix, and then add about 5 drops of lemon juice and 5 drops of olive oil. restraint in the artist's imagination is part of the key to this thought experiment. this should be left to develop at room temperature, and you are now free to attend to other kitchen matters, or the wine.

since all of the precisely considered elements necessary for perfection are already assembled, sobriety is no longer requisite, always a relief after such taxing mental work. when you are almost ready to serve the dish, chop the remaining onion, and about half the fennel, not too fine: slivers are good, chunks are inappropriate. fry these in butter over a low to medium heat, aiming for translucency rather than caramelisation. add some finely chopped garlic towards the end if you like, and a bit of salt. have some extra fennel fronds chopped and waiting.

boil the pasta. long, thin cappellini are best, or spaghettini, or even linguini if you're a fan. when it's almost ready stir a few spoonfuls of cream into the onion and fennel, then lift the pasta out with a little cooking water clinging to the strands to add to the sauce, and stir it through the onion and cream over a gentle heat.

plate your pasta, then scatter the waiting fennel fronds wantonly about to create tension between feckless gestures and thoughtful precision. lastly, place three quenelles (that's French for 'blobs') of the diced salmon atop the centre of each pasta dish. if you're speedy enough the pasta should stay hot and the salmon should just warm through, enhancing the fine notes of flavour and creating a delectable sensation in the mouth.

and so the thought experiment shows that the creative processes of an artist can be mimicked, but not accurately; they are changed by the very nature of adaptation. and that smoked Petuna ocean trout and vacuum-packed supermarket smoked salmon both taste better than Shrödinger's hypothetical dead cat.

appealingly burnt cream

2008-03-26T16:42:00.007+11:00

I like having JG read aloud to me. this happened a lot with the "you-me present" I gave him (the present you buy for someone because you want it yourself. if it's a book, it works great: they're really chuffed, and then later you get to read it). the book was Hugh Fearlessly Eats It All, by Hugh Fearnley-Witthingstall, one of JG's culinary heroes. the reading aloud was partly prompted by the hilarity of the writing: it's very unfair to sit there and chortle away without sharing the jokes, although some were lost in relay. one night, while deeply engrossed in the denser events of the Sicilian mafia trials, I was interrupted with "Hugh makes bouillabaisse".
yes?
"that's all".
okay. apparently the funny part was too long.

one memorable piece, which started a mini-fad in our house, concerned Hugh's ultimate last meal, crème brûlée. if Hugh had to name his desired final mouthful, it would be that bastard-pedigree English custard with a French name. if you're thinking "but there's no chocolate in crème brûlée", I'm right with you, but each to their own last meal. JG, however, was really taken with the sumptuous description of velvety custard and crunchy caramel.

people love to argue about the origin of "burn't cream", as it might have described in the earliest English translation. it pops up mostly in British texts, and, rather tellingly, isn't mentioned at all in my edition of Larousse. a Wiki entry credits the first written record to François Massialot, a seventeenth century Parisian chef, and author of Nouveau cuisinier royal et bourgeois (1691), translated into English in 1702 under the title The Court and Country Cook. François might've pilfered the idea from a Spaniard, German, Czech, or anyone with a penchant for baking custard under a sugar crust, but the English stamped their own mark on it (literally) when it became famous at Cambridge's Trinity, where the college coat of arms was branded into the sugar layer. this sounds far stranger than your usual dessert-decorating, like some kind of dangerous nationalism on a micro-level.

crème brûlée is a sort of upside down crème caramel; the latter has the caramelised sugar on the bottom, and is inverted to present a saucy crown on the custard, but crème brûlée can't be turned out of its baking dish, so the sugar crust is formed on the top. the addition of egg white allows custards to be unmoulded, but crème brûlée is made with yolks only. hypothetically the first crème brûlée might've been the result of a crème caramel stuff up. why not the other way round? well, like I said, it's not in Larousse, and I choose to take that as a historical clue, rather than a slight against the English and their cooking habits (but they're a veritable goldmine of culinary jokes, aren't they?). the Larousse definitions of crèmes D'entremets et de pâtisserie (creams and custards) only allow for milky concoctions, noting that cream can be added after the custard has been formed to enrich the finish. anything that doesn't conform is banished to that linguistic category of anglo-abomination, crème Anglaise. (the Italians do this too: English style custard is called zuppa Inglese, relvoltingly translated as 'English soup'. for me it conjours up the image of an Englishman taking a bath while supping on cold toast and a cup of tea and simmering in his own week-old filth. but then I'm not a bath person.)

Hugh's requirements for crème brûlée render it totally English. no milk, no egg whites, just four ingredients: vanilla bean, egg yolks, caster sugar and double cream. and he means caster sugar, don't be tempted otherwise: demerara might look fancy but it tastes wrong.

and, yes, double cream. but sadly, I've tamed my hedonism these days and can't justify the pleasures of 60% fat (in fact I rarely even use the "regular" 38% fat cream, opting for 18% "light" cream, but not the brand new and rather scary "extra light" cream, with about the same kilojoules as plain yoghurt. it tastes like thick milk. in fact, it IS thick milk.)

so a custard is a custard is a custard, in some senses, and crème brûlée should work with any combination of milk and cream, but of course fat tastes better. Hugh Fearlessly Eats It All is a collection of the author's columns; thoughts and anecdote rather than recipes, so JG followed me into the kitchen, book in hand, saying "egg yolks, caster sugar, double cream and a vanilla bean. but how much?" we just made it up, but here's a tip from Larousse: custard can contain up to eighteen egg yolks per litre of milk (at which point presumably one should not be thinking about using cream; it's already so rich.)

and then there's the problem of method, about which Hugh goes into great detail. starting the custard on the hob, then baking the individual serves in ramekins set in a water bath is the safe method, but he says the most sublime result comes from continuing the mixture on the hob. just know your heat, and push your luck a little, and hopefully you'll cook the custard to perfection, which you then pour into ramekins and set in the refrigerator.

which brings us to the caramel end of the business. the sugar should be spread evenly on the top of each custard to a thickness of about 2mm. ideally it's caramelised with a blowtorch, and in The Cook's Companion, Stephanie Alexander says buy your blowtorch from a hardware store, not a kitchenware store: they're cheaper (and presumably bigger and more fun). but it can work under a griller. it should be glassy but not too dark, and definitely no scorched blisters. as for serving, Hugh says cool custard, warm, crunchy top. I say warm, gooshy custard and hot, crunchy top.

to make 4, the safe way:

preheat oven to 150°c and boil the kettle.

3 egg yolks
200ml milk
200ml cream (or omit the milk and use all cream)
1 heaped tablespoon of caster sugar, plus extra for crust
vanilla bean or essence (I hold no snobbish grudges against vanilla in a bottle, as long as it once touched a vanilla bean and wasn't brewed from tar or possum dung- I quite like the slightly alcoholic taste it imparts. Hugh would be mortified...)

whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl.
heat milk, cream and vanilla until it's quite hot but not boiling, then add to the egg yolks and whisk properly so there are no lumps.
sit four ramekins in a larger baking dish. fill each one with custard and then fill the outer dish with the boiled water (sometimes it's easier to add the water once the dish is in the oven).
bake for about 12 minutes, or until custard is set but a bit wobbly.

cool before attempting the sugar crust:

scatter a layer of sugar about 2mm thick on the surface of each custard.
if you don't have a blow torch, it should work under a grill.
get the grill scorching hot, so the top cooks fast without melting the custard (this is the usefulness of the blowtorch).
sit the ramekins on a tray so you don't have to touch them once they're burning hot.
grill the sugar quickly, until it's melted into a glassy layer and browned slightly. a spoon should be able crack through layer and this should not involve any charcoal. this caramel stage of sugar happens at around 140°c (and charcoal happens at around 190°c) so cool them for about half an hour before eating.

high times on rivoli bay

2008-02-19T12:57:00.006+11:00

"You bloody pensioners", JG growls in the general direction of his parents' caravan. "You're worse than bloody garbage trucks, waking us up this early".

his father converses loudly with a few of the other summer residents at the Tourist Park about the morning's fishing conditions. they're right outside our tent. later he dismisses the complaint in his thick, Scottish drawl.
"Arrh yeess, always have a boat meeting in the morning". he frequently omits all pronouns except the second person "ye", reminding me of some Northern British dialect, where the definite article is always omitted before "pub", thereby saving valuable time while trying to get "to pub". a useful language innovation if ever there was one.

this is Beachport, a small community seemingly obsessed with crayfish. everyone dives or sinks pots for the spiny delights. commercial cray fishing boats also operate here, and at wholesale price of around $53 a kilo, they naturally operate on the weekends, too. but this Saturday three of the boats instead have a wedding party to catch from the jetty, for a watery ceremony in a corner of the bay by the old lighthouse. we are here for JG's cousin's marriage and JG is the reluctant photographer. payment: crayfish.

the wedding was a great reinvention of the ritual: the wedding party boarded three cray boats - these graceful vessels are usually described as "ploughing" through the waves, although my own experience is that they just ride the big swells a little smoother than, say, a tinny. I was, however, trying to balance on high wedge heels while juggling a beer and spare camera gear. the boats left the jetty and soon a little runabout fishing boat smashing against the wave at high speed appeared in our midst, presenting the bride, complete with simple ivory dress and bouquet (fortunately for her own safety, no veil). a few missed attempts and the runabout was roped to the main bridal boat and she climbed aboard. after an exchange of vows replete with sailing and fishing references the couple were married. flares were set off to announce to the shore viewers that the groom had indeed kissed the bride, and we made our way back to the jetty. the photo opportunity of the day was, naturally, the James Cameron-esque Titanic re-enactment. bride and groom climbed to the bow while JG descended into his vantage point in the little boat, which my eyes never left; I was terrified for him until sometime later when my eyes located his bright-white Cuban shirt safely on the jetty. the scene was less Di Caprio-Winslett and more we-feel-silly-can-we-go-now but I think JG can still claim his king-of-the-world moment as director. down the road we went, on to the ensuing feast, where the night descended into high-school memories, talk of shearing sheep, and vomit. notable guests included Kevin the Kangaroo, a hand-reared joey still dependent on his gorgeous human mum. Kevin poked his head out of his shoulder-bag pouch for the speeches.

the following day we set out for the long drive home with the payment stowed in the esky. caught the day before and never frozen, we pondered the mushy-flesh conundrum that afflicts most seafood when freezing/defrosting. it was already agreed that we'd have one of the raw tails for dinner, but what to do with the rest? according to Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, crabs, like all crustacea, contain "an amino acid which encourages bacterial growth" and should not be kept more then 36 hours without freezing. since there is no entry for lobster, we accepted that we must freeze the remainder rather than eat them all at once, risking possible anaphylaxis, renal failure or severe gout.

this is our first taste of the bounty, roasted lobster tail with garlic olive oil and roast potatoes.

roast the lobster tail in shell for 20 minutes at 200°c.

split lenghtways down the middle and place each half under a hot grill for a further minute or two to cook the centre.

serve with warmed olive oil seasoned with finely minced garlic, salt and pepper.

egg and etymology

2008-02-04T10:39:00.000+11:00

I think it was Nigella Lawson who wrote somewhere that making mayonnaise isn't hard if you don't think it's hard, but dare to think about the difficulty of what you're doing and it'll split every time. when I read this I recall being smug in the knowledge that I could already make allioli, mayonnaise and any kind of egg-emulsion I wanted; surely this is not a thing you can un-learn? wrong. time and the tyranny of short-term memory loss saw me produce several runny batches of garlic flavoured egg-mess which was not allioli or anything like it. the thing with such a failure is the ritual pollution associated with the raw egg. an egg is such an amazing, complex entity, but in the raw state it's suspended between categories, no longer animal, but not quite food until it's been modified, cooked, whisked, salted (unless you're one of those disturbed people who swears by a raw egg down the throat for a hangover)... so ruined allioli or split mayonnaise isn't just annoying, it's also somehow deeply ick.

my failures were caused primarily by my stubborn reliance on machines. I was sure machines had worked before, but I must have been deluded. neither the food processor nor the egg beater could make a proper emulsion of the consistency I wanted. my mixtures were either runny, or strangely aerated and bubbly. this was a given. everyone knows that food processors just can't do some things, instead they like to make glue. but I needed to prove it to myself just in case there really was an easy way out. and here I must insert a quick aside about how else I've been duped: my friend TJ got into a bit of Tupperware partying last year, and I piously refused to have anything to do with it, not just on ideological grounds but also because I have far too many plastic storage containers already. and then the other night while we were chatting in the kitchen she casually quarters an onion and puts it in a little blue device with a lid, gives the lid a few twists and then throws the perfectly diced onion into the salad.
"what's that nifty thing?", I ask.
"it's the Happy Chopper. it's Tupperware. of course, you wouldn't know about that since you didn't want to come to the parties.
"and that's not all", (she's not a kitchenware-televangelist, we'd just drunk quite a bit of Prosecco by then).
out comes another device, a big bowl with a lid and a handle. the thing has all sorts of attachments, one of them clearly for whipping cream and the like.
"you can also add this to the lid: it's a slow-drip pourer, so you can make mayonnaise. the oil drips in here while you turn the handle here."
my eyes narrow into slits.

"you were jealous", JG said later. "admit that you want Tupperware".
never. these recipes are in defence of the whisk.

my first attempt after those long-ago failures was Frank Camorra's allioli recipe in MoVida, followed exactly to the last letter. I knew this would work because 1) it's a new book of recently tested recipes with contemporary ingredient qualities and 2) I just love Frank, I think he's great. naturally success ensued; I had thick, lustrous allioli, gloriously golden, like the fabio of egg-emulsions. apart from the obvious textural benefit of hand whisking, the secret of this recipe is to make a very thick emulsion and then thin it with acid at the end, rather than starting with acid in the eggs and then adding oil. you do this:

whisk two finely chopped garlic cloves, a tablespoon of mustard and some salt into two egg yolks. have 300ml of oil ready, a combination of olive and sunflower or some other less flavoured oil (this is a concession to the milder tastes favoured by the Australian palette- Spaniards like their olive oil straight up). whisk as you add the oil drop by drop, making sure each addition is properly emulsified before adding more. once the business is underway you can safely add larger amounts of oil without a worry. taste for salt, and if you need to add more, dissolve it first in the 2 tablespoons of lemon juice which go in at the end. whisk this in to thin out the mixture a bit. Frank suggests whisking in 2 tablespoons of warm water to finish: he promises it's like a secret guarantee the emulsion won't split later. he's a star.

now, I love a juicy polemic, especially if it's about food, but you can't argue with Frank. unless you're Hervé This. Hervé is a physical chemist, and a wonderfully knowledgeable and nitpicky writer on everything food, including etymology. for one thing, he says, mayonnaise with mustard is not mayonnaise at all, it's remoulade. ok, Frank translates Spanish allioli as garlic mayonnaise, not exactly a crime against semantics. the real argument here is the lemon juice versus the oil first. I know that all my failures started with lemon juice, but Hervé says you need the lemon juice or vinegar in the egg yolks before you add the oil, because the volume of watery parts (lemon juice and egg yolk) is what helps the oil molecules separated by the whisking to swim around in the pond, get coated in the surfactants in the egg yolk, and never rejoin the other oil molecules in one big oily phase, forever suspended in the emulsion. but it’s not just about working in watery volume, there’s also electrical charges, making mayonnaise sound very dangerous indeed. acid environments increase the electrical charge of the surfactant molecules from the egg yolk which come to coat the droplets of oil. having the same electrical charge, the droplets repel each other, making them even less likely to reconnect with their own kind. all this talk of separating is confusing, when mayonnaise should be about joining, but actually it is just a suspension where oils and watery parts are tenuously hanging together in a rich, creamy goo.

but remoulade, the very mention of remoulade opens up a whole new world of egg-emulsions. why stop at garlic? remoulade can be virtually anything suspended in egg and oil, as long as it tastes and sounds delicious.

for a lamb-and-fish barbeque I wanted leek remoulade. and then I wanted basil remoulade. so I made an all-in-one affair. basil purists should make one or t'other, but the combination works. I think, however, it needs mustard and vinegar instead of lemon juice, but my sister is vinegar-phobic (I'm serious, she thinks it makes her face sweat?!) so both were off my list.

leek and basil remoulade

gently warm a finely chopped leek in a cup of oil for a minute or two, until it's just softened a little. it should still be slightly pungent and quite bright. the oil shouldn't really "fry" or bubble at all. cool the oil.

whisk 2 egg yolks with plenty of finely chopped garlic, ground mustard seeds, pepper and salt. gradually add half a cup of olive oil and half a cup of milder oil, whisking each addition until smooth. it should be quite thick.

add the leek and cooking oil and whisk until mixed.

add lemon juice, gradually thinning out the mixture little by little until you have the right consistency.

pound a large handful of basil leaves to a paste and add to the remoulade.

the luis buñuel

2008-01-23T15:28:00.000+11:00

some time ago JG got into his martinis in a big way, concocting strange variations, including one containing the world's most disgusting vodka, Absolut Raspberry. he suggested Luis Buñuel's martini recipe, from his autobiography My Last Sigh, was a necessary blog entry. I had forgotten all about it until I read my friend JP's most excellent blog Experiments in Booze: tested on humans, devoted to all things ethanol.

the Buñuel must be the most repeated alcoholic recipe on the web, however no account of our kitchen would be complete without it. if you're in Melbourne they’ll make you one at Gin Palace. if not, get busy freezing stuff.

"To provoke, or sustain, a reverie in a bar, you have to drink English gin, especially in the form of a martini. To be frank, given the primordial role played in my life by the dry martini, I really think I ought to give it at least a page. Like all cocktails, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. At a certain period in America it was said that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative powers of the Holy Ghost pierced the virgin’s hymen 'like a ray of sunlight through a window – leaving it unbroken.'

"Another crucial recommendation is that the ice be so cold and hard that it won’t melt, since nothing’s worse than a watery martini. For those who are still with me, let me give you my personal recipe, the fruit of long experimentation and guaranteed to produce perfect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients – glasses, gin, and shaker – in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don’t take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Shake it, then pour it out, leaving only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, shake it again, and serve.

"(During the 1940s, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York taught me a curious variation. Instead of Angostura, he used a dash of Pernod. Frankly, it seemed heretical to me, but apparently it was only a fad.)"

the curse of the bouillabaisse

2008-01-07T14:27:00.000+11:00

cooking and knowledge have always been synonymous for me. I've learnt to cook primarily through reading and record keeping, and conversely have come to understanding the chemistry, traditions and methodologies through experiential processes in the kitchen. consequently, my culinary knowledge is built around The Rules.

new years eve. a group of friends In a garden enjoying a seafood feast.

someone began reminiscing about an old friend, known to some of us. the friend had grown up on an island and insisted that he'd always eaten the mussels that don't open when they're cooked, and it's perfectly safe to do so. we all agreed that this was breaking The Rules, but none of us has ever been brave enough to test the theory.

a few days later, we acquired a whole ocean trout from the market, a wonderful orange treasure with sparkling eyes and a good amount of belly fat.

JG filleted the fish for sashimi and fillets to freeze, and suggested we use the skeleton to make stock the following night. somewhere in my head, an upstanding English voice pronounced The Rule that fish stock must be made with a flat fish with minimal fat, ideally a turbot. but I've never even seen a turbot. why does it need to be a turbot? what do they mean by 'flat'? can you use a flounder? and what about flathead, which would surely make pretty ordinary stock?

so I broke The Rule and made fish stock with ocean trout:
1 fish skeleton (including head)
1 onion, sectioned
5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
a few parsley stalks
salt and pepper
3 litres of water

boil rapidly for 20 minutes, then strain. remove and shred any useful flesh from the bones and set aside .

this made a strikingly orange and delicious stock. it was destined for fish soup and I was thinking about bouillabaisse. the famous soup from Marseilles constitutes Another Rule in itself, that is, unless you're from Provençe and related to a fisherman, or begged the knowledge from someone who is, you cannot make authentic bouillabaisse, you can only make fish soup. In fact, in 1980 a group of Marseilles restauranters signed a Bouillabaisse Charter agreeing to uphold the authenticity of the original recipe, although the details are contested.

just to get some ideas for my fish soup and without any lurking intention of breaking The Rule, I checked Larousse to get the low down from Prosper Montagné, that oracle of The Rules.

alas, Prosper says that there are as many authentic recipes for bouillabaisse as there are combinations of fish, and the authenticity lies in the etymology: from bouillir to boil and abaisser to reduce. the soup has an origin similar to paella- a dish cooked by men outdoors over a fire. in this case it was cooked on the beach by fishermen wanting to use up the catch they couldn't sell. as a result it usually contains rascasse, (scorpion or rockfish- unfamiliar to me and sounds rather indigestible) and little crabs and other shellfish. the fish and shellfish are removed at the end of cooking and served in a separate dish from the soup, which is poured over dry slices of a local bread called marette. this must be the origin of the most recognisable contemporary form: the fish served in the soup, topped with a large crouton rubbed with garlic and drizzled with rouille, the addictive saffron and chilli sauce.

the soup should be flavoured with olives, pepper, parsley, saffron and other spices, and dried orange peel. and since I was clearly going to break The Rules at this point by venturing to make bouillabaisse when I'm not Provençal or a man, fisher or otherwise, I had to break some more and substitute olives for capers and dried orange peel for fresh lemon rind.

the interpretation:

fry a finely chopped onion, some salt and a whole bay leaf in a little olive oil in the soup pot, slow to medium so it doesn't brown.

add pepper, and about 15 strands of saffron ground up with a little salt and mix this into the oil.

add a few finely chopped cloves of garlic.

peel and chop 3 tomatoes and stir this in when the onion is soft.

add a cup of white wine and simmer away for 5 minutes or so, until the wine is quite reduced.

pour in the fish stock, add some parsley stalks, lemon rind and capers and bring to a rapid boil.

add cleaned mussels and any other shellfish, and the reserved shredded flesh and continue to boil rapidly for another few minutes, until the mussels are open.

if using delicate pieces of fillet this will break up in a rapid boil, so turn the heat off and gently immerse the fish in the soup, leaving to stand for another 5 minutes with the lid on.

remove parsley stalks and lemon rind, then carefully spoon fish and shellfish into serving bowls and ladle soup over. add chopped parsley, and bread and rouille if desired.

opting for simplicity, we had our soup with just mussels and filleted pieces of trout, without bread or rouille, but I highly recommend rouille as a sauce for fish and so must include the recipe:

for rouille (not according to The Rules but the version I always make)

half a roasted capsicum
1 fresh red chilli, chopped
a handful of breadcrumbs moistened with water
6 strands saffron
1 tsp hot paprika
good squeeze of lemon juice
2 anchovy fillets
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup oil

pound everything except the oil in a mortar and pestle, or blitz in a food processor, gradually adding the oil to form a smooth sauce.

later that night

JG came back to bed moaning with sickness and I feared my wonderful orange interpretation of bouillabaisse had made him ill.

"No it's not that" he said; "I ate the mussel that didn't open".

the queen of sheba

2007-12-17T10:41:00.000+11:00

notwithstanding the fact that there are probably hundreds of classificatory types of chocolate cake, the most useful order I find for organising this unruly subspecies of cake is with the following three categories:
i) flour and cocoa, no chocolate
ii) flour and chocolate, with or without the addition of cocoa
iii) flourless with chocolate
it should be noted that the family has not been seen to include a flourless cake with cocoa but without chocolate (at least by me- this is the kind of chocolate cake I would likely ignore) and that the latter two genera are usually imminently more satisfying than examples from the former, although cake batter made with cocoa is quite nice to eat raw, if you're into that sort of thing.

food phylum aside, a French recipe from the third category seems to have become deservedly popular above many others, it is Reine de Saba or the Queen of Sheba. to trace the literature of this recipe suggests it came to England and Australia through Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, and via Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking to the United States.

in The Age this year Stephanie Alexander published a version close to David's, in which she notes that the original recipe 'gives the chocolate quantity as "one-quarter of a pound". Many cooks have increased that quantity, although I see no need to', which was an immediate incentive for me to defy restraint and boost the chocolate quotient for a slightly richer, denser cake. the recipe usually includes coffee and brandy too, which I substituted entirely for scotch: I tend to keep my coffee and dessert separate, and we've drunk the bar dry of brandy, rum, muscat and most of the liquers.

the special texture of this cake is achieved by two important factors: leaving the centre a little undercooked to preserve the fudgy feel of chocolate, and, at risk of banging on like Delia, knowing when to stop beating the eggwhites. you should have a soft, voluminous white mass, not stiff building material.

finally, I have no suitable answer as to why this cake was named the Queen of Sheba, when à la Reine usually denotes special dishes with chicken or eggs. perhaps it's because somewhere in the Old Testament the Queen supposedly enticed Solomon with the words "I am black and comely..." and that she is, that she is.

my take on Reine de Saba

150g dark chocolate
100g butter
3 eggs
2 tablespoons Scotch whiskey
3/4 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup caster sugar

preheat the oven to 160°c.

melt the chocolate and butter over a gentle heat.

break the egg whites into a clean bowl and place the yolks in a separate mixing bowl.

beat the sugar into the egg yolks until the mixture is pale and creamy, then mix in the whiskey.

add the melted chocolate, stirring well to prevent splitting, then mix in the ground almonds.

butter and line a cake tin* and check the oven temperature.

at the last minute, beat the eggwhites to soft peaks and add to the chocolate batter in three stages to gradually lighten the mixture and preserve the aeration of the final addition.

baking time should correspond to the size of the tin. see note. as the centre should be undercooked it's best to remove the cake when the surface springs back from a light press, before it rises enough to crack. it will sink a little when it cools.

the cake is quite fragile and should be removed carefully. as it's a moist texture anyway there's no harm in allowing it to cool in the tin and turning it out once it's firmed up a little (this is usually ill-advised as condensation would destroy a delicately textured cake such as sponge).

dust with icing sugar.

* this is a fairly small cake. I like deep, fudgy sorts of shapes so I use a small tin designed for the top tier of a wedding cake, about 18cm diameter. this needs about 40 minutes in the oven but for wider, flatter cakes check at about 20 minutes.

chicken salad of my sleepless nights

2007-11-20T11:47:00.000+11:00

I only read Haruki Murakami between the hours of two and five in the mornings.
before any fortunate sleepers think this connotes disrespect to the wordy Japanese jazzman, I would hasten to mention that the insomnolent don't always read to induce sleep. sometimes it's a deliberate search for literary weapons with which to battle those wakeful demons.

nobody can illuminate the temporal discord experienced by the insomniac quite like Murakami. his cities, like all cities, never stop. but they change in the shadows between the last train and the first morning service, becoming surreal versions of their lighted forms. nor does his time stop; but the count can creep slowly and inexorably like treacle, dragging the past through the present like a thing stuck in the flow.

I am reading his newest fiction, After Dark. Murakami describes the city in a nocturnal lull as still alive, but on basal metabolic function. from the couch I hear my own city making the sounds of basic continuous motions. sparse, benevolent motors freed from daytime urgency. the buried humming of the elevators and their insistent arrival bells. more importunate are the garbage trucks. an easily neglected fact about cities, this one at least, is that for the sake of traffic and pedestrians the garbage can only be removed between 11pm and 5am. people ask me if I like living in the middle of the city.
"Love it, but for the garbage trucks".
"Oh yes", they agree, "we get woken up by ours on Wednesday mornings too".
but mine are different. they are nightly, numerous and frequent, each taking a different category of waste from the subterranean loading dock below my window. they beep, seemingly with intent to disturb, as they begin their long, tight reverse into the hidden darkness of the dock. once the truck is in place a hydraulic whine begins; lifting, compacting, grinding. this is loud, the straining engine part. when it ends twenty minutes later the regular hum of the truck's engine seems unobtrusive by comparison. the air brakes screech on release and the truck grunts as it climbs out of the dock and on to another load up the street. on a busy night there's another one waiting in the street to take its place. I have Murakami-esque images of a truck which removes only the plastic fish shaped soy sauce dispensers which the take-away city sushi-munchers generate daily by the thousands. he would thoughtfully problematise the categorisation of the little red or green plastic caps for the fish shaped bottles, I'm sure.

Murakami's descriptive style almost avoids sensorily provoking the reader, as if out of tact or modesty, while evoking the scene in a more prosaic manner. at times the scenes in After Dark turn us from reader to viewer as he tells us what he and we are seeing on the screen or through the lens, taking away scent, taste and sometimes confounding our clear view with blurred images and static. but he doesn't restrain his use of sensual language for aural pleasures. once the owner of a jazz club in Tokyo (in the 70s, when jazz was not Big In Japan), Murakami's passion for Ellington et. al. is irrepressible. the sounds of those musicians are scratched out by needles in various rooms, for Murakami is a vinyl lover. he elucidates a soul-search for the true meaning of music through the young trombone player, Takahashi, who answers Mari's question about what it really means to play:
"Hmm, let's see... You send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state. Probably."

in Murakami's style of casually revealing the profound and extaordinary to the reader in the most prosaic of scenes, this conversation takes place at 3:07am in a Denny's restaurant. Takahashi orders a chicken salad with crispy bread, because he always orders the chicken salad at Denny's, even though he pretends to peruse the menu anyway, just so it's not apparent that he always orders chicken salad with crispy bread (which is never as crispy as he requests, despite Japanese technological proficiency, he muses). the implied repetition of the chicken salad reminds me of the more obvious temporal indicator in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, in which the narrator is always cooking spaghetti when he receives mysterious phone calls, and informs the caller that she only has nine minutes left to talk because the packet indicates the cooking time is ten minutes. when I read that book I pictured Mr. Wind-Up Bird swirling the boiling spaghetti with his cooking chopsticks, and wondered what kind of sauce he added.

now After Dark sees me awake at 4:57am wondering what a Tokyo Denny's chicken salad is like.

blue two

2007-11-15T12:27:00.001+11:00

my second attempt at blue mould cheese, rather more appealing than the first, but slightly too dry. back to the cheese-cave-drawing-board for more effective humidity next time round...

fish for friends

2007-10-29T16:18:00.000+11:00

a roasted leg of lamb, or a rolled, stuffed pork loin carefully prepared and cooked for hours until meltingly succulent is a fine thing to enjoy with loved ones. a mushroom risotto with homemade stock or a paella carefully designed and fussed over are also wonderful things to cook for someone in the spirit of commensality. however I find that I most often turn to seafood when I want to cook and eat a celebratory feast.

I deny that this is any kind of leftover Catholic indoctrination, as any self-respecting atheist would, although maybe the Judeo-Islamo-Christ figure informs the specialty of seafood in some subversive way, like it forms the basis of the legal system and strangely just about everything else: Jesus shared fish; Thou Shalt Not Kill. hmm.

maybe it's a relic from the economic prestige attached to the shellfish of my youth ("it's your birthday, order the lobster". alarming given my size, but as a young child I could eat a whole lobster mornay at San Giorgio's on Cardigan St in Carlton. and on New Years Eve my father would always hold a prawn-feast and say "I don't know how the rich are living, but the poor are doing okay"). but I don't try to "mornay" anything these days and favour the heart and hospitality underlying peasant style cooking, not the bourgeois connotations of abundant seafood.

but there is something from the heart in a fish-fry. one of my favourite albums of all time is Uncle Junior's Friday Fish Fry, the first of this series, called the market - remixes by Djinji Brown. the son of saxophonist Marion Brown, Djini weaves snippets of stories and histories in a funky, illuminating electro-jazz-soul groove. he doesn't sing about fish, but the producer Wes Jackson writes in the liner notes that on special Friday nights in their Bronx apartment his Pop would have a fish fry-up and they'd all sit around and play music while waiting for another batch of scallops to emerge from the deep fryer. I like to muse on the details of this kind of commensality.

so last week a prawn fry-up seemed the best way to celebrate a none-too-frequent chance to catch up with a busy friend. the catch was big Australian tiger prawns, served whole with chilli sauce and a stack of napkins.

method
get the sauce ready first:
simmer a chopped onion in olive oil.
when the onion is soft add plenty of chopped garlic and fresh chilli, cook for a few seconds and add canned or chopped tomatoes.
a tablespoon of sweet chilli sauce and plenty of fish sauce enhance the tomatoes, as does a stick of lemongrass (pounded if you're energetic, or added in whole pieces and removed at the end if you're not).
simmer this for about half an hour, and then puree before serving.

for the prawns:
the prawns get fried head and all in really hot peanut oil. this oil, then infused with crustacean shell flavours gets added to the sauce. (at Claypots, Renan serves the cooking oil as the sauce, which is intensely rich and smoky and if you are decadent enough to soak your bread in that garlicky thigh-builder you'll know why it's too hard to stop and I've substituted the tomato base instead).

bearing this in mind, heat the desired amount of peanut oil in a frypan or deep-fryer.
when hot, add some salt and a few pieces of garlic to flavour the oil; remove them when they start to colour, and reserve for later if you're a garlic fetishist.

ensure the oil is really hot, then add the prawns (in batches if using a small pan or weak heat source), cooking each until their little legs start to turn crispy golden and the shells begin to blister, about two minutes or less each side.
if you're cooking in batches return them all to the pan at the end to heat them through.

now you have a smoky kitchen and crustacean oil; add some or all of the oil to the chilli sauce and serve with bread and a burns hazard warning.

(alternatively, Tetsuya Wakuda makes a crustacean flavoured oil which you can buy at David Jones; not nearly as fun as making your whole house smell like the Claypots strip of Barkly Street).

cauliflower salad
blanch florets of cauliflower in boiling water then drain and run under cold water to keep them firm.
in a bowl combine the cauliflower with a handful of toasted pistachios, a handful of chopped chives and one of chopped dill. dress with a mixture of yoghurt, olive oil, tahini and lemon juice, seasoned with finely chopped garlic and ground cummin, allspice, cardamom and salt.

roasted capsicum
a deceptively simply but punchy thing, this (also from Claypots); grill or roast whole red capsicums until the sugars caramelise and the skin blackens. peel and slice the flesh into thin strip then drizzle with a little sherry vinegar and olive oil. scatter with salty capers.

JG's two-bean dip
boil chopped green beans until just tender. sauté the beans in garlic and oil then add a little water, salt and pepper, and cook a further two minutes.
blend the beans and cooking water with a can of drained cannelini or white beans, lemon juice and ground cummin.

so sad to see you go...

2007-10-23T12:37:00.000+10:00

"I'm all alone;
I smoke my friends down to the filter"
- Tom Waits

it's terrible to part with a cheese which has so benevolently occupied a small corner of the bookcase for three and a half months. but damn it tastes good.

this cows milk romano developed quite fast due to the warmth in the apartment and its relatively small size. made with just 6 litres of milk, it was pressed into a 12cm diameter mould.

the rind is slightly chewy and strangely bland, though not unpleasant. this is because the dry conditions caused it to harden rather than ripen as in a more humid environment, however it was rubbed with olive oil during the early stages to prevent cracking as the internal structure of the cheese settled into shape and this has naturally contributed to the flavour. rinding romano really is quite a difficult art, and I would've been more frustrated by my result if I had not discovered a strange fact at the cheese show: Andy, the cheesemaker at Shaw River is also unable to create the right environment to rind his buffalo milk romano, called Annie Baxter, only available for a short time each year and a beautiful cheese to be hunted down and greedily coveted. instead, Annie Baxter is matured for nine months vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag to prevent any rind forming at all, resulting in a moist, creamy, uniformly soft texture.

romano, as with parmesan, another lipase-type cheese, develops a white grain throughout the body, almost like tiny, crunchy shards of salt. these calcium lactate crystals are a desirable part of maturation for these cheeses and greatly add to the texture and flavour. in Italian they are referred to as grana, or grainy cheeses. In the US, quel surprise, cheesemakers can buy a commercial food additive which inhibits this crystal formation. I'm rather pleased that although this kind of cheese usually matures for longer, (nine to twelve months) my mini-romano already had quite good crystal formation, and the overall effect is that of a ripe, fruity cheddar or a soft, milder parmesan.

this was a surprisingly good result for my first hard cheese, and has encouraged a plan to make a whole collection of the little rounds and dot them around the apartment like so many demented flowers... and so fragrant, too.

ooooo ... puffy cheese

2007-10-16T13:03:00.000+10:00

I'm thinking egg. poached egg. poached egg with fried garlic chips and anchovies.

fancy egg...? fried egg on toast. No. egg in wonton pastry (?). no, a fancy ravioli experiment with poached egg inside, brushed with oil and finished with grated parmigiano. hand made fettucini encircling poached egg, with garlic oil and parmigiano.

no, no poaching. no making pasta. the ultimate egg and cheese indulgence has to be cheese soufflé. with garlic.

having been unceremoniously disinvited from The Motorbikes, and not that I care in the slightest as I didn't even really want to go, *harrumph*, I was free to eschew conventional nutrition and eat decidedly odd things for dinner. actually in the interest of being fair, I was only thinking of going to Phillip Island for a change of scene until JG mentioned something about sleeping on the floor.

and a weekend alone is a weekend in which to make up for lost garlic time. (not that JG doesn't like garlic, not at all, it's just that I have a deep and insatiable garlic fetish which would render me a complete social hazard were it not tempered.) I was on a mission to eat as many bulbs as possible before he got back. he's still kind enough to kiss me, but predictably Nick Cave didn't leap off stage to pash me at the Grinderman gig the following night. (I must insert quote of the month here, gratuitous references, ahem - and not from me - "[Nick's looking pretty old] but I'd still let him fuck my tits"...)

I'm not a soufflé expert, but in essence, it can't be hard to lift a roux base with whipped egg whites. but I'd had a few glasses of sherry before moving onto neat scotch so Stephanie Alexander's recipe introduction "soufflés are not nearly as fraught with danger as some cookery books would have you believe" was a relief .

so then discarding the recipe almost entirely, here is cheese soufflé for one.

preheat the oven to 200°c.

have a buttered ramekin ready.

finely chop 3 cloves of garlic.

fry the garlic in 2 teaspoons of butter.

don't let them brown, you want the full garlic flavour.

once they've sweated a bit, stir in two heaped teaspoons of plain flour, mix and mash it about and turn the heat down.

once the flour is "cooked", add 1/3 cup milk, stirring well before any lumps form.

add salt and pepper.

cook this mixture for about 4 minutes without browning. this cooks the raw taste out of the flour.

it will seem stodgy. this is normal.

remove from heat and add too much cheese. I went for 3 tablespoons of grated parmigiano and one tablespoon of grated cheddar, however a red rinded cheese such as gruyere or comte would be the ideal choice.

separate an egg and put the white into a clean bowl ready for beating.

mix the yolk into the cheese mixture and beat well until smooth and creamy.

whip the egg white until firm, then fold half through the cheese mixture to lighten it, then gently fold in the remainder.

fill the ramekin and get it in the oven straight away.

they say not to open the oven door while a soufflé is cooking. I can only speculate that this must be referring to large soufflés which risk collapsing in the middle.

anyway bake it for about 9 minutes for a half-cup capacity ramekin or less for a wider, flatter soufflé.

(the astute observer will immediately notice that this mixture will not fit into a half-cup ramekin. either use a slightly bigger one or eat the leftover mixture while waiting for your soufflé to cook.)

it should be brown on top, puffed up and then allowed to deflate and cool for just a moment before you plunge a spoon into delicious cheese-and-egg flavoured air. with garlic.

house-cured salami

2007-10-05T11:52:00.000+10:00

VB (while entering the apartment via front door, the scent of maturing romano in the air):

... "we've gotta eat that cheese soon, it really tings"

JG

... "maybe it's not the cheese you can smell"

(chortles maniacally while stabbing a finger at the space behind the bookshelf)

... "maybe... IT'S THAT!"

no longer free to enjoy the balcony views due to increasing spring temperatures, the lone salami has taken up residence inside near the "cheese cave".

originally there were two, however one tragically split during a bizarre string tying accident. the sole survivor still feels soft and probably needs a few more months to dry out.

spice up your pub life

2007-09-27T11:03:00.001+10:00

there are so many reasons to drink at the Union Club Hotel, and right now it gets even better: the pink pepper trees in the carpark are bearing fruit (see, why would you go to any other pub?)

being of diminutive stature, and slightly tipsy as I was, I didn't notice the long tendrils of berries hanging from the trees as we staggered off to find a tram. but JG spotted them so we filled our pockets and went home to cook (briefly detouring by the bottle shop to entertain the good people with our strange, spicy perfume and giggling).

pink pepper is not the same botanical genus as black, green and white pepper. these are the various ripening stages of Piper nigrum, which is a vinous plant. pink pepper is the fruit of the Schinus terebinthifolius tree. but despite divergent botanical binomials, pink pepper smells and tastes remarkably like black pepper.

the pink skin is dry and papery. if you buy pickled pink pepper in jars it usually has the skin on (otherwise it wouldn't look pink - the berry inside is olive green). grinding the fresh fruit separates the skin from the inside but the whole lot can be ground up together. the flavour is strangely provocative, first intensely perfumed like rosemary or eucalypt, then piquant and almost sour, with the suggestion of heat that leaves a desirable bitterness.

JG ground a (small) handful of the berries into his ubiquitous salsa verde which I love in all its incarnations; a fine addition to slow-grilled marinated lamb cutlets.

salsa verde
grind fresh herbs and pepper in a mortar and pestle.
usually parsley predominates, with the addition of rosemary, thyme and mint.
add oil, salt and lemon juice as you like and blend to a smooth consistency.

marinated lamb cutlets
finely chop 3 cloves of garlic and mix with oil and lemon juice.
add salt, and thyme or pepper as you like.
marinate the cutlets for at least half an hour, reserving the marinade afterwards.

green pea skordalia
peel and chop two good mashing potatoes.
boil in salted water, and add the same quantity of peas when the potatoes are almost done.
tear up some bread and soak it in cold water.
when the peas are just cooked, ladle the peas and potato into a blender so you keep the cooking water.
squeeze excess water out of the bread and add to the blender.
process to a smooth mash with the addition of chopped garlic, lemon juice, oil and salt.
use the starchy cooking water to thin it out.

this makes a great base for the cutlets, except timing is important: it goes from shrek-green to oscar-the-grouch green the longer it sits.

beetroot with yoghurt dressing
steam or boil whole baby beetroot or beetroot segments.
boil the left over lamb marinade for a few minutes with a little extra oil, some ground cummin and whole nigella seeds.
cool a bit before stirring in a few spoonfuls of yoghurt.

of corn, chocolate and cashews

2007-09-18T16:09:00.000+10:00

"But we in England usually boyl the Chocolate with the water, and some to make it more dainty, though less wholesome, use therein Eggs and Milk."

-- Phillipe S. Dufour, 1685

I was wondering wondering when milk turned up in chocolate preparations, given that for most of the history of the bean it has been prepared into a drink made with water.

fragments of language and culture pieced together by Mesoamerican linguists, epigraphers and archaeologists locate the origin of chocolate in late Olmec civilisation, known as the Mixe-Zoquean language family or Izapan culture. they named chocolate, for which linguists have reconstructed the phonetic "kakawa".

before kakawa, there is evidence of an important Olmec process, which is thought to have contributed to chocolate: "nixtamalization". it refers to corn. pounding dried maize kernals into an edible form was probably hard work, and boiling them would've taken ages, so efficient Olmec housewives (they had "housewives"?) are credited with inventing the process which sees maize softened by cooking with white lime, wood ash or other possible additions such as burnt snail shells. Boiled and left to cool in this solution, the pericarp of each grain was easily removed and the soft remains could be made into a dough (masa in Spanish, nixTAMALLI in Nahuatl and hot TAMALES to Robert Johnson, yeah...) nixtamalization increases the amino acid content of the maize through the action of the alkali on protein, resulting in a nutritious, high protein food. take away the process (as Europeans did when they got their grubby mitts on New World maize, because they had mills that could grind the kernals without soaking) and you get pellegra and other deficiency conditions.

but corn is not chocolate. the tenuous but valid leap to be made here is that a civilisation which has time to sit around while the hard work has been taken out of subsistence preparation can invent a few luxuries, like ritual, religion and chocolate. hence prepared cacao drink is thought to have been a ritual substitute for human blood in sacrifices, a delicious supply of complex alkaloids and stimulation and probably an aphrodisiac. the Olmec origin myth, the saga of the Hero Twins, features the slain god of maize and son of the creator mother and father, his severed head hung on a tree in the underworld. the tree is depicted in later renditions as a cacao tree however is not an integral part of the myth. the potent element in the mythology is maize, which finds its way from the underworld to the earth via the Hero Twins, born on the earth to an underworld woman impregnated by the severed head. they later return to the underworld as part of their heroic conquest and raise their father, the maize god, from the dead, thus bringing maize, the staff of life, to the earth.

so little physical evidence remains of the Olmec culture. if they kept written records the material (perhaps bark) has not survived. what has been reconstructed is the root of cultural elements documented in Mayan codices and artefacts. cacao and the Hero Twins passed from the Olmec to the later Maya (descendants of the Classic Maya, who apparently spontaneously combusted), where cacao became increasingly important. gods are drawn holding cacao pods, and hieroglyphs explain that cacao is what the gods eat. other glyphs appearing in cacao related texts can be identified as meaning "water", which makes cacao drink; "foam", a word related to water; and "chilli" and "fruity", possible flavourings to add to the drink. additionally there is a verb which has no equivalent in English but translates as "to pour water/cacao from one vessel to another from a height sufficient to create foam". in this way cacao was dissolved in water, flavoured, and mixed through several pourings to create a frothy chocolate drink fit for the gods, but consumed by humans, maybe only the elite and as part of a daily worshipping ritual.

skipping the brief but brutal Toltec hegemony, the Aztecs and their tequila, (octli, a drink fermented from the agave plant), both civilisations continuing the chocolate-drinking legacy shown them by the Maya. and passing over that most arbitrary Line of Demarcation in 1493 drawn across the New World by the depraved Pope Borgia, and the subsequent Spanish conquest, we come to chocolate in Europe. it was made to the Mayan recipe, but with the addition of sugar to make the bitter alkaloids more palatable. the Spanish introduced the sugar, the French quickly picked it up and also made a sweet version, the Italians made a version too dark and roasted for the French palette, and the English, rightfully the brunt of many culinary jokes, made it with milk. obviously at some point the French also started doing this with the bowl-cup thing, but the earliest historical reference to chocolate and milk I could find is the aforementioned quote from a Frenchman unhappily exiled in England in 1685.

I like milk, so I see the merits in a chocolate and milk preparation. but there is no escaping that the taste of chocolate becomes adulterated by flavour of milk and cream. if you really want to taste chocolate, melt a high cocoa* solid content chocolate such as 70% in a little boiling water. I first came across this in a cake recipe devised by a chemistry nut who illuminated the taste adulteration presented by the addition of dairy. I was amazed by how right the claim is, especially as it seems more intuitive to control the splitting of chocolate by melting it in fat, such as butter or cream. you can actually melt chocolate with the addition of any hot liquid but careful stirring is required to produce a smooth ganache that doesn't split.

what else can carry the flavour of chocolate without ruining it? this question brings the history of chocolate to contemporary Northcote. if you go to Coco Loco on High St you can have cashew milk (or Kashew Mylk, to Mr. Loco), made I'm guessing in the same way as the Italian latte di mandorle (almond milk). cashew milk goes into Coco Loco's chocolates and truffles, and chocolate drinks, and numerous other tempting chocolatey creations which taste of pure chocolate instead of milk and cream, and are then completely vegetable-origin (except the white chocolate things, of which I must recommend the cardamom and pistachio drink and truffle).

nuts! chocolate in nut milk! está loco...

* cocoa is the preferred British English term for the part of the plant that the rest of the world refer to as cacao, although confusingly the unprocessed beans are called cocoa on the New York Commodities Market.

Images, quotes and references from The True History of Chocolate By Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe.

Thames & Hudson, 2000.

the big cheese is back

2007-09-12T16:10:00.000+10:00

cheese update: romano

it's still going, now aged two months. I wasn't sure we'd last the distance, since it sits in its box near the front door smelling all cheesy and inviting, but now we've come this far I know we can make it to three months.

it has shrunk a little, but rather alarmingly it weighs only 600g now. this is slightly odd. although it is generally agreed that I am (almost) completely innumerate, I could've sworn it weighed 1800g as a newly formed cheese. unfortunately I don't have a photograph of the cheese on the scales back then, so I don't know if it has lost two-thirds of its weight to dehydration, or if I'm just inept at reading scales and it actually weighed 800g (it's been known to happen...)

applying my (cough) mathematical prowess might help. romano is a low yield cheese, leaving you with 7-9% of the original milk solids. I think in cheese making this guideline generally expresses volume however I've not measured the cubic mass of 6 litres of milk. but seeing as nothing is added to the cheese in the process (except minute amounts of starters and salt), the equation should roughly translate into weight.

so one litre of cows milk weighs 1087g. the romano is made with 6 litres, so the original milk weight was 6.52kg. divide that by 10 because it's too hard to work out 7-9% any other way and (finding calculator- sorry Dad, I know it's disappointing, you tried so hard) the result is 652.2g, so the cheese is now a bit less than 10% of the original milk weight. which proves absolutely nothing about what it weighed two months ago. all those years I told those teachers, and my Dad, that math was a pointless waste of time. proven.

it probably means, though, that the cheese can do a little more drying to shed those extra couple of percentage points that I can't calculate. more oiling of the surface and here's hoping that the paste has formed correctly under the rind without any air pockets.

old tart (yet très élégant, très classique)

2007-08-29T14:52:00.000+10:00

what dish would be the definitive conceptual antithesis of molecular gastronomy? it must be something that's been cooked for hundreds of years and doesn't involve "air" or "foam" (and check out this short comic strip...)

I do get really excited about new and intriguing cooking ideas, like chocolate "soil"- I read about this and decided I would race home from work and make it. and then promptly forgot. but history, friends, history...

the classics need to be cooked. they need to be cooked so those recipes continue on their memetic journey through time and civilisations, replicating and evolving into, um, another dessert. yeah. ok that's my recipe-as-meme theory. I'm not yet sure of tarte Tatin's status as a meme, but I'm onto something here. recipes are history and culture, lives and places and stories.

and memes. food transmits cultural ideas. the first person who cautioned against against eating shellfish and pork planted a cultural meme in other minds that has replicated into one of the most successful memes in history (and ensured more scallops and suckling pig for me, bless them).

so eschewing any experiments in molecular gastronomy for a moment, I made a tarte Tatin. actually, I just had some apples to use up. I'd been thinking about it for a while since seeing this version on Stonesoup, because I love puff pastry (who doesn't?), but good sense took hold and I made it the traditional (and less fattening) way. it's butter, apples, and caramelising sugars in an appropriately artless pastry. sort of pretty and ugly at the same time, and definitely not cleverly molecular.

but first, a bit about the tarte Tatin story... apparently first made in 1889 by the Tatin sisters at their hotel in Lamotte-Beuvron in north-central France.

some of the mythology suggests that the cook accidentally constructed the pastry and filling upside down (?). others suggest that the apples cooked for a regular apple pie started caramelising when the cook forgot about them in the oven, so a pastry lid was hastily thrown on and the tart was turned upside down and served with the fruit on top to appreciative diners.

then... the guy who started Maxim's in 1893 stopped by the Tatin's hotel, tried their tart and it's been served at Maxim's ever since. given that Maxim's is now owned by the designer Pierre Cardin, I'm wondering whether the tart has taken on some innovative features (I'm thinking of my mum's wardrobe circa 1982 and I am frightened for the tart). if anyone has eaten tarte Tatin at any of the Maxim's restaurants across the globe, please describe it to me, I'm intrigued.

oh, my disclaimer, as you can see I was not true to history, those are big Golden raisins from California which I first soaked in sherry. they're quite the sweetest dried grapes I've ever tasted.

tarte Tatin

makes a 19cm tart (use a non-metallic baking dish).

preheat the oven to 200°c

filling:
3 medium apples, peeled, cored and cut into roughly 6 to 8 wedges
1.5 tablespoons caster sugar
1.5 tablespoons brown sugar
40g butter, melted
half a teaspoon of mixed ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves
1/3 cup raisins (optional)
1/3 cup sherry (optional)

pastry (any rough unsweetened pastry can be used, this recipe has less butter to make it easier to work with):
150g plain flour
60g butter
half a teaspoon of salt
enough cold water to bring the dough together

to make the filling:
mix the raisins and sherry in a bowl, if using.

mix the sugars and spices in a bowl.

pour half the melted butter into a pie dish and sprinkle with some of the sugar mix.

arrange apple pieces tightly in the dish, this will be the top of the tart when served. scatter some raisins and sherry about (the sherry will caramelise too so don't worry about excess liquid).

sprinkle more sugar over and add the remaining apples and raisins, trying to create a relatively flat arrangement. if you have more apples you can make the tart as deep as you like.

sprinkle over remaining sugar and melted butter, then put it in the hot oven while you make the pastry.

to make the pastry:
rub the butter into the flour and salt until it resembles breadcrumbs.

add enough cold water to bring the dough to a stiff but workable texture.

roll the dough out to about 5mm thick and cut a circle big enough to encase the apples. you need to tuck the sides of the pastry down beside the apples so make a guess at the size of your circle and then you can trim it a bit once it's assembled (or make a square one and bugger the geometry...) the pastry will shrink a bit during cooking so err on the side of excess.

remove the apples from the oven when they've begun to colour. go by smell- they should be fragrantly sugary but not deeply toffee-like.

gently use a spoon to pull the apples toward the centre of the dish a little, just to make room for the pastry sides.

lay the pastry on the apples and tuck the sides down (with the back of a spoon if it's still hot). as the pastry warms up you can gently press it into a nice flat tart base. the above pastry recipe is quite robust and safe to poke.

return the tart to the oven and reduce the temperature to 170°c after a few minutes.

bake for about 30-40 minutes, until the liquid bubbling up side has thickened and darkened.

leave for 3-5 minutes so the pastry can harden a little, then invert the tart.

traditionally served warm with vanilla ice cream.

martinis and ice cream

2007-08-24T15:19:00.000+10:00

I finally hear the keys in the front door at 2am (this takes some time). as I'd thought JG would be home around 9pm, sober, I'd already called several emergency departments and one police station. it had crossed my mind that he was probably just out and about getting merry except that he'd gone to a meeting, not the pub...

let me assure the reader at this point, the following scene is nothing like that which my dear Uncle Nick painted on the wall of his studio, him sneaking in the door on wobbly knees (no doubt after a late night card-session with my grandfather), and his wife, Carmel, waiting around the corner with a rolling pin behind her back. I was not armed with any kitchen utensils, or even angry, I was just a bit worried.

eventually defeating the lock, JG stumbles through the door at a 45 degree angle to the floor, his right leg flailing about madly and unable to support his weight.

Me: Where have you been? have you lost your phone? I've been so
worried? what happened to your leg? ... etc.

Him: BABY! I'VE HURT MY KNEE!

Me: ooh let me get you an ice-pack, what happened? ...
fuss-fuss etc.

Him: I don't know. I only had one martini and I think I got
kicked out of the cab. I don't know how far I walked.
(incoherent babbling and giggling)

Me: one martini huh?

...

I made you some banana and honey ice cream.

Him: potato titties! you made me potato titties?

Me: ?

No.

Banana ... and ... honey ... ice ... cream.

Him: oh good, where are they? I'm going to eat potato titties now,
let's have 'em!
(flails around on bed but fails to achieve any degree of
verticality. gives up.)

Banana and honey ice cream (or potato titties, depending on how many bottles of red you had before that martini...)

the addition of cornflour is an attempt to make ice cream in the Turkish style which doesn't generally use cream and achieves texture with sahlab, the powdered root of an orchid, which has starchy, thickening properties. (I'm sure I'll be able to find real sahlab if I bother to look for it...)

2 ripe bananas, pureed
1 litre of milk (hedonists, use half milk, half cream)
1 cinnamon quill
2 tablespoons of dark rum
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon of caster sugar
3 tablespoons of honey
vanilla (seeds or essence)
1/2 cup of cornflour

bring the milk, cinnamon, rum and vanilla slowly to just below boiling point.

in a separate bowl mix the egg yolks, honey and sugar until the mixture is fluffy and pale.

add the cornflour and continue to mix vigorously until the egg yolk mixture is smooth and creamy.

when the milk is very hot, pour it into the egg yolk mixture in a steady stream (sans cinnamon), beating continuously. you may get a bit of froth-top action- this is ok, it will go away.

return the mixture to the saucepan and heat over medium, stirring continuously.

after it begins to thicken, turn the heat down a little and continue to cook for another 7 minutes or so, to cook the powdery feel out of the cornflour.

cool, then churn in an ice cream machine or freeze and beat with an electric beater every 45 minutes or so, at least 3 times (this method will probably result in a few crunchy ice crystals forming.)

pork belly

2007-08-23T12:59:00.000+10:00

there's something about the peculiar satisfaction of eating charred pig that really inscribes the event in your gastronomic memory (that's the part of your brain that resides in your stomach and makes you think about caramelised deep-fried pork hock when you should be thinking about jogging). I can remember in lurid detail most of my pork belly experiences. the first was at MoVida, it was sinful and excellent. Supper Inn. Bar Lourinhã. Cookie. there must be more.

but I've never cooked it. I've looked up many recipes, walked past slabs of the stuff most days down Victoria St and had always intended to try it, but, well, they're very big, those slabs. I was waiting for the right recipe and number of willing participants. (actually, I'm terrified of roasting- how English to stick a big slab of meat in the oven for hours. what if it dries out and you're chewing on something like a handbag?) fortunately, JG knows how to roast things rather well and isn't put off by such concerns, so he cooked a piece just for the two of us.

it was great. crispy, crunchy, salty crackling and succulent meat separated by layers of soft, melting fat. the cooking method too, was genius. JG looked to his culinary hero Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall for the answer to the dryness problem: skin side up; meat part submerged in wine and stock with a bit of onion, carrot and thyme thrown in. the meat cooks slowly in the stock and rendering fat, and the skin crisps up above in the dry heat. like I said, genius.

and despite the fact that it shrank considerably it was still quite large (but we ate it all anyway. half for dinner with all sorts of healthy accompaniments, and half cold when we came back from the pub later that night... this is the danger of the lingering pork belly...)

preheat the oven to 200°c.

make several deep scores in the skin through to the fat, and rub the skin with salt. stuff thyme or sage into the cuts.

scatter onion slices, a chopped carrot and a few thyme sprigs in the bottom of a roasting pan and sit the meat on top, skin side up.

pour stock and white wine into the pan until most of the muscle is covered, leaving the skin and fat layers exposed. bake for about 1 hour, depending on the size of the cut.

when the meat is cooked and the skin crisp, rest for 10 minutes before cutting. I prefer the cubed chunk rather than the thin slice. if you're going to eat it you may as well experience all that fatty goodness in mouthfuls, and do away with the pretense of delicate slices.

the genealogy of cake

2007-08-15T14:40:00.000+10:00

... but first, a big thankyou to Peter Costello, for providing today's comic relief. What a jerk!

JG recently requested his grandmother Ruby's shearing shed cake recipe from his dear mum Raels. she baked one for him too. I like its vaguely sweet ambiguity, somewhere between cake and bread.

once I started looking into the recipe, a number of things came to light about shearing shed cakes (including this glossary of shearing shed terminology, in case you ever need an explicit definition of 'dag'). there is no definitive recipe, each stock-owner's wife invented her own, it seems. it just had to be something that goes with tea and cigarettes, and ensured the hospitality kept the shearers and workers coming back in following seasons. many of these practices seem to have been replaced by self-sufficient contractors, although JG suggests that the "cockies'" hospitality would still be a strong part of the culture on more remote stations such as he worked for a time, and no self respecting shearer would be caught dead passing up tea and cake for instant soup.

these unassuming cake recipes, like much of the world's traditional cooking, can be read as cultural and historical documents which trace people and politics to place.

Ruby's ingredients are brewed tea, sugar, flour and currants. in reconstructing the genealogy of the recipe only the currants pose a problem. the other ingredients are clearly a legacy of the rationing system.

when sheep graziers pushed into new land in NSW and SA around 1815, their workers were paid in a set ration, known as "ten, ten, two and a quarter" (ten pounds each of meat and flour, two pounds of sugar and a quarter-pound of tea. and some salt.) this ration became a real feature of social and political life, according to Michael Symons in One Continuous Picnic, evidenced by its mention in job advertisements, news articles and the like. more usual cake inclusions such as eggs, milk and butter were not part of the rations because they didn't keep (no refrigeration), and the rationing system was implemented when the workforce was new, and mostly comprised of single men. perhaps it was very macho to eat nothing but salted meat and damper, and drink very sugary tea. at any rate the working population seemed to be disinclined to stay in one place too long, so there was no cultivation of fruit and vegetables or keeping chickens.

so this shearing shed cake is a sweet damper made with rations. but Ruby was born around 1918, so we had to fill in some gaps. we can roughly assume that she learnt it from her mother or grandmother, although apparently rations did influence the culinary landscape heavily for most of the century. food trends probably don't change that fast in Kalangadoo, where she was born, raised and died.

which brings us to the currants. Kalangadoo is close to Coonawarra, so the dried vine fruit was perhaps an obvious inclusion. and there may be some influence from the Temperance movement (that's apparently how raisin toast was created: to use up all that vine fruit in California once Prohibition was enforced and wine producers were left with a glut.) in Australia, anti-alcohol policies ranging from earlier closing times to cancellation of liquor licences and outright drinking bans had been implemented in most states in some form beginning around 1850. by 1920 Temperance had become something of a national trend, championed in South Australia by the Women's Christian Temperance Union. (what did the rest of the world make of this dark period of English-speaking history? collective lunacy, perhaps?)

admittedly much of this reconstruction is just us postulating theories while standing around in the kitchen munching on buttered slices of shearing shed cake. we don't really know whether Ruby invented her recipe or got it from someone else, or when it was first made and who thought of adding currants, but it's a bit of JG's family history with some interesting historical references.

Ruby and Raels's shearing shed cake

1 cup of strong brewed tea
1 cup of currants
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of self-raising flour

pre-heat the oven to 180°c.

mix the currant, sugar and tea and allow to stand until the tea is cool (at least two hours).

add the flour and mix to a smooth batter.

bake in a loaf tin for about 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted tests clean.

the cheese show

2007-08-13T11:31:00.000+10:00

aaah, the cheese show. JG tried to work it out before I went off on my lactic mission for the second year running... he figured that at 300 cheeses at about 5g per serve I would eat 1.5kg of cheese on Sunday. If I did, it hasn't done anything to dampen my cheesey desires. actually mostly the tastes are very small, and I probably missed a couple (what was I thinking?), and there's not usually bread, just very small fragments of lavosh wafers, so it's not that hard. AF and I were almost ready to start the room all over again as soon as we'd finished, until TJ dragged us to our senses and off to the pub for a beer.

excuse the poor picture quality, I forgot my camera.

here we have AF's impressive array of acquisitions.

I also procured many fine cheeses and a nice quince paste, all of which will last us... probably about a week.

notable inclusions on the day were, as always, Shaw River's buffalo cheeses, some great blues, including Jumbunna cows blue, a settled (not pressed) Stilton type from Jindi 's Top Paddock label. there were plenty of washed rinds, the beautiful goats milk camembert and brie styles from Woodside Cheese Wrights in the Adelaide Hills, and some great fresh goats curd and chevre styles from Yarra Valley Dairy and Meredith Dairy.

Apostle Whey (so named because it's "on the whey" to the twelve apostles... I had to ask) runs Friesian cows which give a distinct flavour to their cheeses (their blue is particularly fantastic), and Alexandrina Cheese have Jersey cows with their amazing creamy milk, which goes into their great cheddars and dutch style cheeses.

sadly excluded, for whatever reasons, were Kingaroy Cheese, from Queensland, which I tried at last year's show and unfortunately haven't come across for sale since, Grandvewe Cheeses from Tasmania, Tarago River from Gippsland with their wonderful Strzelecki Goat Blue, and my favourite cheeses in the world, Holy Goat (perhaps because the latter two are off to Italy for the Slow Food cheese symposium!)

and then there was this gem... we were wandering around thinking we could smell cheese fondue, and there it was, a burner melting wedges of Heidi Farm's Raclette, scraped onto bread, so gorgeous, gooey and delicious!

jg's confluence of agreeable flavours, theory #2

2007-08-08T11:47:00.001+10:00

fruit salad with jaffas

and that's not even ice-cream, it's yoghurt. it was healthy right up until he added the jaffas.

oh well, at least they're fruit flavoured...

twisties for dinner

2007-08-02T09:03:00.000+10:00

we must be halfway through the film festival. I would know if I knew what day it is, but that's what I get for trying to keep up with the beer-drinking prowess of my dear friend AF (I put it down to proper German fortitude, JG thinks I'm a lightweight and just need more practice... no, I do not need to drink more, I promise you)...

some random observations regarding the film festival -

during this 19 day period of July into August, dinner can constitute any or all of the following: twisties, cheezels, m&ms, (king size) cherry ripes, choc-tops (for those without an irrational fear of biting into cold hard things that induce dental pain - I must reveal here that I've never eaten a choc-top - I imagine them to be like horrible frozen rocks masquerading as something sweet and nice).

some people bring souvlakis into the cinema. am I a killjoy or does this violate a natural law of some kind?

Grated Onion, the cinema on Russell St, is quite the crappest cinema ever. this observation is justifiable according to the following -
- the seats are old and crap and uncomfortable
- they can't run a session on schedule
- the carpet smells faintly of regurgitated popcorn. do people really eat so much popcorn that they vomit? or is it reversed gastric matter of unspecified content, mixed with un-masticated popcorn spilled on the floor?
at least they're allowing queues inside this year, instead of letting us stand around in the skanky laneway in the freezing cold.

those coconutty-almondy Rafaello things come in VERY LOUD PACKAGING, as politely noted by Pseudo-Professor-Creepy-Guy in the row in front of me at the Regent. pompous jock-itch. damn those things are good, has anyone eaten one lately?

the Regent is quite the best theatre, and it is worth going there even to see a crap film, just to sit in that beautiful, majestic space.

my two picks to date: The Cats of Mirikitani and Return to Goree. both beautiful, excellent, inspiring...

the film about the people who shag horses: a bit naff.

Black Sheep by Jonathan King, a horror-comedy with lots of kiwi sheep jokes is going on general release most likely at the end of August (can't waste valuable festival sessions on films that will screen at the Nova in a few weeks). it's had good reviews and I await general release for some cutesy-baa-lamb-blood-guts action.

jg's confluence of agreeable flavours, theory #1

2007-08-01T14:25:00.000+10:00

avocado and bacon

JG comes up with some strange flavour combinations sometimes (to self, quietly: OMG-he's-putting-tumeric-near-my-pasta-what-the-hell-is-he-doing?), but there are some brilliant theories there so I've decided to document them.

some are simple but great, like avocado and bacon- it works, it's good. some are strange and revelatory in nature. and some might contain pineapple, which I promise never to allow onto these pages.

this is also his favourite combination in a croissant for breakfast (Babka do a great version). strangely he remains unconvinced about the merits of bacon and banana (like Café Rosamond's bacon and banana jaffle), but I'm working on it.

the big cheese

2007-07-27T10:01:00.000+10:00

cheese update: romano

impressive, if only in size so far, this vacchino romano is the biggest cheese I've made yet. when it had finished draining it weighed in at just over 1.8kg, although it's almost two weeks old now and spent a bit of time in front of a gentle fan for the all important drying period so it's probably lost a bit of moisture weight since then. (this doesn't work for humans, although I think it may have been a weightloss technique used by some of my former patients in an affluent, taste-devoid area south-east of the city, however my cheese is far better looking than those tandoori coloured old hags with their 16DDDD built-in chin rests and crusty décolletage.)

vacchino refers to this being a cow milk romano, common in Australia and the U.S. Italian romano would more commonly be pecorino, sheep milk, and occasionally you can find caprino romano, made with goat milk.

it's a very low yield affair, as the curd is formed with quite a lot of rennet, and then at the cutting stage the curd is cut into very small pieces, almost like fat rice grains. this gives the curd much more surface area through which to expel moisture (whey), causing the curd texture to become hard and tight. additionally, the curd gets heated up to about 45°c, which forces even more whey expulsion. this kind of process requires a different bacterial starter to other cheeses- mesophilic bacteria used for brie, crottin and softer cheeses would die at about 38°c. romano and any "cooked curd" cheese requires thermophilic (or heat-loving) bactieria.

when the curd mass is drained and put into the shaping form it gets pressed with about 10kg of, well, books and baking dishes in my case, because I don't have a cheese press. the funny shape of this round happened because the curd tried to escape out the bottom of the ring under the weight. swearing at the cheese clearly did not correct this problem. anyway what you end up with after drying is less than 10% of your original milk volume. the lack of moisture content, incidentally and not that I care in the slightest, is why this kind of cheese is higher in fat per volume than other cheeses.

apart from the fact that I like cooking with, and just eating, romano and parmesan type cheese, I decided that this would be my first hard cheese attempt primarily because of the way the rind is formed. romano is not waxed or wrapped, as with other hard cheese, which prevents them from drying out over the long maturation period (anywhere from four months to two years). I'm a bit dubious about waxing cheese, I feel that putting a sealed barrier around the cheese when it's a month old really stops it from maturing with all the flavour characteristics it could achieve from rinding naturally in the ambient environment. additionally, waxed cheeses are usually covered in an edible plastic first to help the wax stick. given that I don't even like cling-film coming near my food I'm unlikely to be dipping my cheese in hot molten plastic... cloth-bound cheddar makers such as Pyengana in Tasmania also follow the same philosophy. cloth rinding allows the cheese to mature more naturally and take influences from the outside as well as what's going on inside (the conversion of lactose into lactic acid- the tasty stuff).

but it requires a bit more work. my romano needs to be rubbed with olive oil when the rind gets dry and threatens to crack, and the oil becomes part of the flavour profile. but it's only 1.8kg, and there's only one. commercial cheese makers have a considerably harder job:

'A cloth-wrapped cheese is turned four times a week for the rest of its life – for maturing reasons, but also to stop it “becoming part of the board it sits on”, and it is wiped and rubbed with olive oil.

“There is a lot of work in cloth-rinding, and that’s why people put cheese in all these other barriers, because then you don’t have to touch it,” says Jon (Healey, cheese maker at Pyengana).' (LeatherwoodOnline 2004)

some of Pyengana's cheddar rounds weigh up to 18kg. the pecorino romano being salted in this picture probably weighs close to that.

the particular flavour of romano and parmesan comes from the addition of lipase. vegetarians, turn away now. lipase comes from animals.

on a small scale, vegetable derived rennet is cheaper than animal rennet, so thus far my cheeses have been essentially vegetarian (post-teenage-vegetarianism, I now consider the lines that vegetarians draw between what they will and won't eat rather arbitrary, although veganism obviously is very different. but if you're eating the putrified ejections of a cow's mammery system designed to sustain its young are you really going to give a shit about the origin of the setting agent?) for setting large quantites of milk, as in supermarket-scale cheese production, animal rennet would cost less. but lipase, an enzyme which breaks down fats, can only be derived in sufficient quantities from animals (including humans- there's a horror/crime fiction piece in there somewhere: maladjusted cheese maker performing midnight ritual sacrifices on groups of urban skaters and harvesting the enzyme from their panreases and digestive tract mucosas.)

but be assured that this is human-free cheese, that was merely a shot at fictional humour.

that aside, if you want to see a cheese maturing (in this case, a cheddar), you can view the live feed from this cheddarvision.tv camera (I kid you not, see for yourself). the star of cheddarvision, Weginald (yes, really) also has his own mySpace site (of course). and he receives a lot of love letters, which apparently upset the cheese maker ("What's 'e do? Nuffing. Just sits there").

If JG reads this post his worst causality theories about curds and madness will be confirmed. I'd better start working on a new front-page, post-haste...

everyone loves a tart...

2007-07-25T15:44:00.000+10:00

"everyone loves a tart", they used to say down at the Fitzroy caf where LB used to work. and it's true. I especially like a custard tart. and there's something particularly fetching about a petite tart as opposed to a big bloody slapper of a tart. my current trend is to shrink my desserts to tiny tiny versions of themselves. it stems from the Garfield theory- yes, the cat: it's less calories if you eat a pie cut into slices than if you eat the whole pie. Many small tarts are therefore better than one slice of a big tart. Also JG gets somewhat irascible if I make sweet munchies, as if I stand at his side with a breadknife forcing him to eat them, so I try to make them small and cute and inncouous.

and another reason why these tiny tarts are so harmless is the pastry. to get a stretchy pastry that can be rolled to a thin delicate shell it's much easier to use less butter and more milk. then you can cut them into tiny rounds and bake them in tiny paper cases or a mini-muffin pan.

I go for paper cases because I am quite retarded at all things muffin pan. I can never get the damn things out- everything always sticks or breaks. incidentally, my darling canine Sylvie Destructor also has the same problem with muffin pans. once LB baked a batch of muffins after she had recently acquired Sylvie and me as housemates, and was uninformed about rampant food-theft habits of the giant, ill-mannered Sylvie. she'd taken the pan out of the oven and left it on the bench to cool for no less than ten minutes before she came into the living room and asked me incredulously "why did you eat the tops off all my muffins?"

tiny almond custard tarts

makes 12 small tarts

pre-heat the oven to 160°c.

for stretchy pastry:
100g plain flour
25g butter
40g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla essence
enough milk to make a stiff but workable pastry (a few teaspoons should be enough)

work the butter into the dry ingredients and vanilla until it is a uniform texture, then add the milk slowly, while working, until the pastry just comes together.

roll the pastry out as thin as possible without tearing, then cut circles with a cutter, or the rim of a drinking glass.

place paper cases in muffin pan holes and gently shape a pastry round into each one.

bake until the pastry is almost cooked, about 10 minutes, in which time make the custard.

for the almond custard filling:
150ml milk
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of Amaretto
vanilla essence
a handful of flaked almonds

beat the egg and half the sugar in a bowl until well mixed.

heat the milk with the remaining sugar, Amaretto and vanilla essence, then when it's almost boiling, pour it into the egg mixture while whisking vigorously.

when the pastry cases are ready, remove from the oven and turn the heat down to 140°c.

fill each case with custard mixture and then add enough flaked almonds so that each tart has a cluster of flakes atop the custard.

return to the oven and bake until the custard is just set, about 10 minutes (wobbly or a bit wet is fine, it will set as it cools).

dust with icing sugar before serving for extra twee cuteness.

hero dish: parmigiana di melanzane

2007-07-19T16:21:00.000+10:00

my Dad's eggplant parmigiana is our hero dish. it's the one my sister requests regularly ever since she left home; it's the dish I boast about to friends and strangers alike; equal has not yet been seen, though there have been challenges. there are a multitude of reasons why it's the best, but mostly it's because Dad's spent years perfecting the recipe, and it takes a lot of work.

now in most versions of the dish, which originated in Naples or the surrounding region (or possibly one of the nearby islands? Ischia?) you fry the eggplant before baking the dish. this is pretty much essential otherwise you end up with a tyre lasagna thing. some healthy people steam or boil their slices first; just forget about that. the great thing about eggplant is its ability to suck up oil and flavours. some people simply fry the prepared slices, some dredge them in flour first, but Dad's version is superior because he goes the whole deal and crumbs each slice (flour, egg, breadcrumbs) and then fries them in good olive oil til they're just golden. you can't use vegetable oil, the olive oil adds to the flavour of the final dish.

but before you get to that stage, there's the salting. in Australia eggplants are rarely so bitter that you need to salt them. when JG and I cook with eggplant we don't salt it, and if there is a hint of bitterness it adds to the dish. but for this parmigiana, the quarter-inch thick slices get sprinkled on both sides with salt and left for an hour to drain. once the juices have drawn they need to be rinsed off and patted dry with kitchen towel.

and there's also the sauce. our family sauce recipe always has canned or bottled tomatoes, an onion and garlic soffrito, bay leaves, pepper and salt, simmered for an hour or more.

so once you've set aside a few hours you get the sauce on the stove, salt the eggplants and leave them to de-bitter while the sauce is simmering away. then you rinse the slices, dry them, crumb and fry them. have some cheese grated ready for the assembly: parmesan or pecorino is essential, and mozarella or or any semi-hard cheese you can grate.

in your baking dish you start with a layer of sauce then a layer or eggplant, then cover with sauce and cheese. another layer of eggplant, sauce and cheese and continue until all the eggplant is finished. top with more cheese and bake for about 25 minutes at 150c. the secret to a well formed parmigiana is a thick sauce used in the right quantity- you can't have your eggplant slices swimming about or the whole thing will fall apart when you try to slice it. it also attains a better firmness if you cook it beforehand then reheat to serve.

it's a lot of effort so make a big tray and give the kids a foil package to ensure they don't starve for the next week! It keeps well in the fridge and is good hot or cold.

delicious bastard cake

2007-07-13T11:11:00.000+10:00

not a cake for delicious bastards (delicious bastards? that's almost Chomskyian in its semantic absurdity), actually this cake is the bastard child of two other delicious cakes.

pain d'epices is the wonderful spiced bread that can be used as a sweet, or an interesting taste to accompany meat. it seems to have originated from a Flemish recipe which found its way to Burgundy when a Duke married a Flemish woman and no doubt used his evil control over the spice trade to great effect in order to provide her with her favourite honey cake. the recipe still made in Burgundy is a soft bread with dark sugar, honey, candied orange peel, cinnamon, cloves and aniseed.

but pain d'epices is made with wheat flour (or sometimes rye flour) and I wanted a wheat free version, so it became something like castagnaccio as well.

castagnaccio is the famous chestnut flour and rosemary cake from Tuscany (in The Food of Italy Claudia Roden attributes the best to Lucca, a province in Tuscany on the Serchio river). it's not exactly sweet. sometimes it contains no other sweetness than the chestnuts, but the version published in 1891 by Pelegrino Artusi (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well) is sweetened with raisins, which is most common, and contains rosemary, olive oil and pine nuts. castagnaccio is made just with water and oil so it comes out soft and dense and almost creamy in the middle without any leavening.

I wanted the bastard cake to be a little lighter, however, and was surprised how well a bit of bicarb soda worked. the result is like a fine, soft genoise sponge cake texture, however it dries out quite fast when cut so try to leave it whole til the last minute.

chestnut flour, like chestnuts, goes rancid quickly, so keep it in the fridge or freezer.

chestnut pain d'epices

makes a 3cm high loaf tin cake. to make a larger cake increase the quantities and bake for a little longer but maintain the temperature.

50g chestnut flour
50g fine pure cornflour
50g butter, melted
50g brown sugar
25g caster sugar
1 egg
zest and juice of 1 orange (not all the juice may be required)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
about 6 allspice berries, ground
2 cloves, ground
nutmeg, grated or ground
1/2 a teaspoon of bicarb soda (this is the pure salt form- baking powder could also be used but may contain wheat products)

preheat the oven to 180°c

mix the flours and sugars together then add the spices and orange zest.

add the melted butter and the egg and mix well.

the flours absord liquid differently to wheat four so add about a quarter of of the orange juice and beat well, smoothing out any lumps. wait a few minutes and check the consistency, adding orange juice as necessary. continue until you have a pourable consistency which is still quite thick (think strawberry thickshake).

once the consistency is correct, add the bicarb soda, mix in well then pour into a lined tin and bake for about 15 minutes (until the top springs back when lightly pressed).

cool for 5 minutes in the tin then turn out onto a rack.

crema pasticceria

2007-07-13T10:20:00.000+10:00

the idea behind crema pasticceria or creme patisserie is to fill pastries and tarts with something vaguely sweet and creamy, stable enough to hold a shape without being stiff or gluey. obvious, really, when it's translated into English (where it sounds slightly less appealing- pastry cream), anyway the bit that always confounds me is the pastry- I usually eat the first batch of crema pasticceria straight out of the pot, being a bit of a custard freak. it doesn't get anywhere near the pastry. although it's very easy to make, it's best to make double what you think you'll need and don't kid yourself from the beginning, you don't need to make it twice.

French creme patisserie is usually based on a hint of vanilla, while the Italian version invokes the usual pastry debate- some cooks swear by a tiny bit of lemon zest, some by vanilla and some think that no pastry or filling is complete without both. I agree with the latter. you don't want so much lemon zest that you can taste it, just a fraction to add a note of sharpness beneath the vanilla sweetness.

wheat flour provides the texture and stability. a low gluten flour is best. if you're a hedonist, you can make it with half milk and half cream for a heavier, richer custard, but normally it's made only with milk.

this makes about 1 cup.

1 cup of milk
75g caster sugar
a scraping if lemon zest
vanilla seeds or vanilla essence
3 egg yolks
25g plain flour (a fine, low gluten flour such as tipo "00" works best)

heat the milk, a third of the sugar and all the lemon zest and vanilla. don't let it boil or heat up too fast or you'll get that "caught milk" taste, as in caught on the bottom of the pan. (also heating milk too fast can significantly change the protein structure, but this is only custard, not rocket surgery.)

beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl with the remaining sugar. when the mixture is fluffy and pale, add the flour and mix in well.

now gradually pour the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly (or mixing with an electric beater on a low setting).

return the custard to the pot and set on a medium heat, stirring constantly. you'll be bored for a few minutes but don't be tempted to turn the heat up, it will eventually start to thicken.

turn the heat down and cook it for a bit longer, stirring constantly, to ensure that the flour is cooked to avoid the raw flour taste.

it's quite stable because of the flour, but I like to cool the pot down in a sink of cold water while stirring just to make sure the texture holds and remains smooth.

if you're not using it straight away you can melt a bit of butter on top of the custard in the bowl to stop a skin forming.

how to eat a proper italian meal... or die trying

2007-07-12T09:31:00.000+10:00

back in the village, about an hour out of Napoli, my grandmother's table was always full. apparently she never cooked just for her family, she cooked for twice as many, and all sorts of regulars and randoms would come to the table unannounced to share the meal. I'm not sure if they came for economic reasons or because she was a brilliant cook and they couldn't stay away. my grandfather migrated to Australia first and established a job and built a home. the rest of the family arrived a few years later, and when my grandmother began to cook in her new kitchen in the weatherboard house in Williamstown, the communal meals recommenced. my father and his sister can remember their neighbours and my grandfather's work mates coming to the table for my grandmother's pasta, roast meats, stuffed vegetables, parmigiana, breads, cakes and sweets. I like to imagine that some of them tasted for the first time amazing things unlike anything they'd known before.

when JG and I went to my aunty Lena's for dinner the other night, ostensibly for salami making advice, we were treated to a sample of those meals. I warned JG that there'd probably be a pasta dish first, and then meat and salad. "OK so don't eat loads of pasta" he noted. It was useless advice, she intended to stuff us and roll us out of there anyway.

first, salami and bread. aunty Lena made two types of salami, one with less fat, clean tasting and barely spiced. they were thin and needed to cure for only 4 weeks. for curing she uses the billiard room upstairs. it's cold. she hangs them just near the balcony door, which is open a fraction so the outside air circulates around the sausages.

next, a plate of pasta marinara. with typical care she doesn't use mussels or clams in her marinara. she makes it with white fish in pieces, shrimp and baby octopus which is meltingly tender from long, slow cooking with tomatoes, olive oil and a hint of garlic.

and then the main onslaught arrived. pork loin, stuffed with a mixture of egg, parmigiano, herbs and bread crumbs, then rolled and baked with carrots and herbs. green beans sautéed in tomato and oil. potatoes, sliced and panfried in olive oil then finished in the oven, served with fresh oregano and salt, exactly as my grandmother used to make. eggplant parmigiana, soft and light, baked with tomato and layers of bread and cheese stuffing in between the vegetable slices.

"oh dio, dimenticato" Lena said. "I forgot the cabbage". she looked around at our burgeoning plates and noted the panic in our faces. "Should I leave it?". JG, who has a genuine appreciation of green vegetables, encouraged her to bring it out, so we added green cabbage sautéed with tomato to our plates.

some small black olives, home cured, delicious with a hint of remaining bitterness.

when it was evident that I was performing calathenics with my duodenum in order to accommodate so much food, my father was protesting "non desidero mangiare troppo" (I don't want to eat too much) and JG was not going to succumb to the customary taunts reserved for in-laws ("mangi, mangi, what's wrong with you, you're weak"), the main event was over.

which brings us to something sweet. chocolate isn't a feature of Napolitana cooking, and nuts aren't used extensively, despite the proximity to Sicily where almonds are revered and used to create amazing pastries and torte e biscotti. occasionally something chocolatey will appear amongst the multitude of sweet offerings at our family gatherings but traditionally the sweet finish to a meal is something small to accompany coffee (it's very Napoli to have espresso after a meal, even late at night. they take it very sweet- the coffee should be pulled directly over the sugar into the cup so the sugar slightly caramelises).

Italian cake is rarely like the English style of dense, moist cake derived from pudding. they're soft and light and dry so they compliment coffee. aunty Lena made an apple cake fragrant with essence of Strega and vanilla, with thin apple slices on top.

and then they appeared, alongside the cake when the coffee was ready. "Look what I made," she said, "do you remember them?"... the zeppole, all glistening golden and crunchy with sugar. abbiamo mangiato troppo. how could we not?

aunty Lena's zeppole

there are seemingly infinite ways of making zeppole (zeppoli is the singular form), some start with a raw batter, as in this version, and some start with a boiled batter similar to choux pastry, but all are essentially fried dumplings which carry whatever flavours you like - honey, cinnamon, jam or custard, or simply sugar. the apple in this recipe is quite an unusual variation and very subtle and delicious.

1 egg
1 large or 2 small apples, finely grated
2 cups of self raising flour
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
milk to make a thick batter
oil for deep frying
sugar for coating

mix all the batter ingredients together and slowly add the milk until you have a batter thicker than cake mixture but not so stiff as a dough. allow the batter to sit for 15 minutes and check the consistency.

heat the oil to very hot, then let it cool off a bit- the zeppole should be cooked in a medium heat so they don't burn on the outside while staying raw in the middle.

drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the oil and cook until done (cut one open to check as the size of your spoonfuls will determine the cooking time). the outside should be golden. drain on absorbent paper.

when cool, roll in sugar (rolling in sugar when they're hot can lead to the sugar melting on the surface, which is also nice).

to make custard filled zeppole, make them large enough to split open. do this with a sharp knife when they're cool then fill with thick custard (crema pasticceria or creme patisserie).

how i learned to stop worrying and love spelt

2007-07-06T09:58:00.000+10:00

was anyone else suspicious when spelt bread started appearing everywhere? I'm not talking like, potentially dodgy salami, dubious interventionist policies, cash machines that beep too loud kind of suspicious- I'm not paranoid about grains or anything... I just wasn't convinced that good bread can be made without wheat flour.

gluten

for good bread you need the right protein content in the milled grain flour. the basic chemical action of bread making is this: while the dough is proving, yeast and enzymes ferment and react to create carbon dioxide. in the oven the increasing temperature inside the loaf causes further gas production, until the yeast gets so hot that it dies, releasing the gas in bubbles which rise up through the dough. these bubbles are trapped in little pockets throughout the bread, leavening the bread as the gas tries to escape. gluten forms the "roof" of the pockets and traps the gas inside the loaf.

rye, barley and wheat all contain a number of proteins, including gluten. rye and barley are lower in protein which is why they're generally mixed with wheat flour for bread making. wheat (Triticum aestivum) is usually favoured for its predictable gluten levels. allowing for regional differences, winter wheat is generally "harder" at around 13-15% gluten, so good for strong bread (think of the big holes in a good ciabatta). warmer weather wheat is softer, around 4-9% gluten, producing a small, even crumb, like cake. durum wheat (Triticum durum) is even higher in protein and the hardness makes good pasta that doesn't absorb too much water during cooking. it's also milled into semolina, and some chewy, crusty Italian breads are made with durum flour or a mixture of durum and wheat flour.

Triticum spelta

so despite seeing loaves of spelt bread coming out of good bakeries, my suspicion wasn't quelled until I figured out what spelt actually was (yes, I need ontological and scientific evidence to make bread. no wonder I'm incapable of religious thought...) Triticum spelta can be dated to about 12 kya (thousand years ago) by palaeobotanical evidence. like the other "covered" grains, emmer and einkorn (or elkorn in some texts), spelt originally grew in the current Iran/Iraq region. they are referred to as "covered" because unlike wheat, the grains do not thresh easily from the husks, they are attached with a strong albumen, which gets milled together with the kernal and makes a strong flour with lots of fibre, protein and flavour. this is great for good bread, but miles away from Tip-Top white sliced. some cultivators have adapted farming and harvesting techniques for wheat production to spelt production, but the extra effort, a lower crop yield and general public infatuation with soft white flour mean that it's not commonly planted. apparently the first Australian crop was planted by farmers in NSW in 1988. for four years they harvested each crop with a pair of scissors before amassing a sufficient seed stock to cultivate commercially. that's dedication...

and the gluten: spelt contains levels of gluten comparable to winter wheat, testing at roughly 10-26% and as high as 40% (this would generally be too strong for most types of bread). to be more specific about the protein, like wheat it contains both gliadin and glutenin, but in a different relationship than seen in wheat. some theories consider that gliadin is the cause of allergy in wheat-intolerant people, and some subjects show no reaction to spelt, but there seems to be lack of conclusive evidence at this stage.

so go ahead and make spelt bread without fear, I've tried it and it works, all is above board and beyond suspicion.

Stallknecht, G.F, K.M. Gilbertson, and J.E. Ranney. 1996. "Alternative Wheat Cereals as Food Grains: Einkorn, Emmer, Spelt, Kamut, and Triticale"

Field, C. 1985. The Italian Baker. New York. Harper & Row.

Bio-Distributors Biodynamic and organic wholesalers: Product history and cultivation

Symons, M. 2007. One Continuous Picnic. Melbourne. MUP.

a portrait of the cheese as a young... cheese

2007-06-26T16:42:00.000+10:00

cheese update: old crottins, Stilton types, young crottins and camembert.

there are plenty of young cheeses in my cheese maturation room (esky) for this update. unlike previous batches, I've managed not to eat them before their prime. "Can I give you some advice from someone who knows nothing about cheese? You need to be more patient" JG sagely intoned when I made my first batch of cheese. How right he was, now I can impress myself no end with just how much cheese I actually have.

but before the news on the youngsters...

mature crottins

I cut into the last of an earlier batch of cows milk crottin last night, which was around 8 weeks old. usually these are eaten at 4 to 6 weeks, and any further maturation will result in a dry interior (apparently some customers of farmhouse cheese makers in the Chavignol region request extra mature crottins and soak them in brandy before eating them with bread). this particular cheese was gently ladled at the curd stage rather than pre-drained or pressed, so it was a moist cheese to begin with and ripened into a semi-soft interior with a fiesty white mould rind. the kind you can taste for half an hour afterwards as it buzzes on your tongue. not to everyone's taste I expect.

two other cheeses from this batch were a failed experiment in wrapping cheese in paper wrap to prevent further drying. the lesson here is that paper wrap sticks to cheese, in fact it becomes a part of the cheese, so if you eat the rind you have to pull the paper out of your teeth afterwards. I won't be doing that again. the solution to this problem with the remaining paper cheese was to cut the rind open and spoon the ripened interior over cauliflower and pancetta risotto. not a total loss.

as a point of interest, you can actually buy the perforated foil wrap used in commercial cheese production, which allows the cheese to continue maturing slowly without drying out or drowning in its own exuded moisture. the downside is that it's quite expensive. picture me tediously poking sheets of regular foil with dressmaking pins when the new batches are ready for wrapping...

stilton types

I've made three Stilton types, albeit much smaller than proper Stilton (they're usually made in 8 kilogram rounds, each one requires about 78 litres of milk). mine are small, which means they'll probably mature faster than the usual 3 months and have a less intense flavour.

the blue mould is Penicillium roquefortii and it's pretty fierce. a day after these photos were taken the entire surface of the cheese was blue-green. for a short time they were maturing in the same container as the crottins and camembert and as expected there's been a cross-over of mould types. the Stiltons are growing a minimal white fuzz from the Penicillium candidum but the blue strain is much stronger, so the little white cheeses are growing dense blue spots which will take over the white mould if allowed (rubbing blooms with salt is one way of controlling specific growth, and dipping the cheese in 95°c water for a few seconds will kill off the blue mould on the surface but allow the white mould to continue blooming). do I sound like David Attenborough, or just a regular lacto-freak curd-nerd?

crottins

these are a goats milk version of the above-mentioned mature cheese (goats milk is the norm for this type in France now, although there are references to early crottin production with cows milk as well). this cheese is characterised by a high bacteria and acidity level during the initial setting period, so very little rennet is required to set the milk. this makes a soft curd which has been in the acidic whey environment for up to 24 hours so it's strongly flavoured, but not sour, with a silky texture once drained. in fact, I stirred and drained some of the leftover curd in cheesecloth which resulted in a more flavoursome and smooth fromage frais than methods I've used before.

these cheeses are drained gently and without a high dose of rennet, which would help firm up the curd and squeeze out extra moisture, so they stay wet longer which means that mould growth is initially slower. this is not generally a problem as long as they form a rind eventually, however it creates the ideal conditions for the growth of poil de chat. yes, cat hair. long black strands of mould that grow in tufts on the cheese. the two cheeses in the rear of the photo below show the beginnings of a poil de chat bloom.

although clearly undesirable, poil de chat is essentially harmless. in extreme cases where the entire cheese surface is black the cheese may taste bitter, but small outbreaks controlled by salting or rubbing usually result in nothing more than a marred appearance on the rind if the white mould is unable to cover the area. the causes of poil de chat are numerous and difficult to ascertain. it can be a sign of poor sanitation, of a contaminated ripening area, or from spores present in the milk from the beginning. encouraging rapid white mould growth with proper draining and drying is the best prevention as the interior probably won't be affected by poil de chat if the rind is correctly formed.

on the right is poil de chat growth on the rack which was submerged in the residual whey and water in the bottom of the esky, used to control humidity.

camembert

my dear friends SS and DW very kindly brought me some fresh, raw milk from a cow they know in Alexandra. cardiologists, don't look, this stuff is so creamy.

goats milk is essentially homogenised when it comes out of the udder, the fat particles being so small that they suspend evenly with the proteins. cows milk has much larger fat globules which is why the cream separates unless the milk is mechanically homogenised. in large-scale cheese production the fat levels in milk are standardised with the removal or addition of cream.

with a fast setting curdling method there is no need to homogenise the milk, as stirring will incorporate the fat into the protein mass. however something about the starter culture or the temperature the night I made these camembert wasn't right, so the setting period was much longer than it should been, allowing the cream to rise to the top. not wanting to rough up the curd too much and ruin the final texture, I didn't stir it and just put the curd in molds and waited to see what happened.

some of the cheeses have formed with an excessive layer of cream on parts of the surface, which slowed mould growth initially, although I'm happy to report that the bloom is now forming correctly over the creamy layers.

I think they'll mature just fine and be deliciously rich and creamy, but anyone who eats them should have health insurance, and girls, try not to think about how it looks just the same on your thighs as before you eat it.

I should also note that despite the privilege of having access to raw milk, I decided to pasteurise this milk anyway. I am all for raw milk cheeses and am incensed by the draconian Australian import laws which ban raw milk cheeses with shorter maturation times, such as Roquefort. however as an inexperienced cheese maker I thought it best not to take the risk with a soft cheese and was not sufficiently prepared to make a hard, aged cheese (cheese matured for longer than 60 days and with a lower moisture content, e.g. Romano, Pecorino, Parmesan, is generally safe from the pathogens which can occur in other raw milk cheeses.) but I did use the gentlest method which has the least deleterious effect on the protein structure, that is to hold the milk at 68°c for one minute, the absolute minimum for safe pasteurisation. standard practice usually involves holding the milk at 72°c for 30 seconds, or even higher temperatures for 15 seconds, which ensures that all bacteria is killed but which changes the nature of the milk.

I think this is my girl, isn't she gorgeous? Her name is Buttercup and she lives at Fawcett Country Cottage.

iron chef: quail battle

2007-06-26T12:08:00.000+10:00

the trusted axiom "all's fair in love and kitchen stadium" hasn't resolved the recent iron chef dispute in our kitchen. we're both still claiming to be the sole champion of the iron chef quail battle.

you know how it is, you get home at 10:30 on a Sunday night, slightly toasted, and there are six quails in the fridge that need to be cooked. JG quickly decided that we'd take three each and stage a quail battle, but didn't set out any other rules and of course we had no judges (our dear friend MC has graciously offered to judge any rematch or subsequent kitchen stadium battles if given enough notice).

so I claim to be the winner with only one quail dish on the basis that
* it was ready in 20 minutes
* it tasted like KFC (this is a good thing, don't deny your inebriated KFC desires)

JG claims to be the winner on the basis that he came up with two excellent roasted quail dishes and one rip-off of my deep-fried winner. we can't remember exactly what seasoning he used (it took over an hour, in which time we drank more wine and feasted on my "bucket" of quail), but we did note the useful fact that they were roasted at 200°c for 25 minutes which resulted in the perfect balance between tender flesh and crispy skin.

deep fried spicy quail
3 medium sized quails
1 fresh chilli, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, grated or finely chopped
1/2 a teaspoon of ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of ground five-spice
4 teaspoons of cornflour
oil for coating the birds
oil for deep frying

mix all the seasoning ingredients including garlic and chilli in a wide bowl and combine well with cornflour.

cut each bird in half from the breastbone through to the spine with a cleaver or scissors, and flatten the halves a little.

heat the frying oil (these can be fried in shallower oil if you turn them over halfway through).

coat the quail pieces in oil and then toss in the seasoning mixture until they're well covered.

fry in medium to hot oil for 8-10 minutes or until done, ensuring that the oil isn't so hot that the seasoning burns. some references suggest to test cooked quail in the same manner as chicken, i.e. pierce between the thigh and body to test for clear juices. I've found that this can be misleading with quail, and although they are best served with a slightly pink breast they can sometimes be too underdone when testing clear at the thigh. if in doubt make an incision at the thickest part of the breast through to the bone and check the flesh colour.

drain on paper towel for a minute before serving.

salami

2007-06-15T11:12:00.000+10:00

I'm quite certain we have the coolest balcony accessory in the street, and it's not from Ikea and doesn't involve geraniums: it's a big fuck off West End Draught esky with salami hanging inside. and it's red.

if you don't have a garage but you want to make cured meat at home this is the way to go. JG assures me that garages and salami are a recipe for disaster anyway. eskies make temperature and humidty control easier and more accurate, and the balcony gets no direct sun at the moment so it never gets too warm up there.

to make salami you need a meat mincer, some bungs (intestines for casing), meat, fat and spices for the filling, and a lot of wine. JG started making the salami quite early and was just starting a hangover by the time I got home from work (so we drank another bottle and a half to fill the bungs).

anyone who wants JG's meat and spice formula should email him, all I know is that it includes pork, garlic, salt, pepper and fennel seeds, but there's more to it than that. the basic process is to mince the lean meat to the right coarseness then mix in fat, spices and the correct amount of salt for drying and preserving. the meat needs to be kneaded by hand. meanwhile, soak the intestines in water so they soften and expand.

a very important step, and especially good after drinking all day, is testing the seasoning and flavour of the filling. fry a little bit of the mixture and taste (drink more wine) and enjoy because the bloody things hang for at least three months- this is no good for impatient people like me.

we didn't have any special equipment to fill the bungs so we used a polyurethane pastry piping bag (I'm not making profiterole until I get a new one).

after hanging for about a week, they look like this:

apparently this is normal and desirable. last night JG removed the mould with a vinegar solution and a lot of scraping (with a pastry scrape- I think I need a new one) and then cleaned the skins with olive oil and vinegar. now they're being pressed between plastic cheese racks with weights on top to press out any air pockets and excess moisture. and we wait. and wait.

while JG was scraping off the stinking grey goo (and I was trying unsuccessfully to run away from the smell and my paper-towel tearing duty) we were musing about the first people who did what we were doing- before anyone wrote about the process and said you probably won't die if you eat this. what the hell were they thinking? as with blue-mould cheeses, this surely was an unfortunate accident that happened to some peasant who was too poor or hungry to choose any other option but to scrape the mould off their old bit of salty meat or cheese and eat it anyway, and discover how good it tasted. in his excellent book One Continuous Picnic, Michael Symons highlights the contrast between the peasant influence on European eating habits and the gratuitous mass production and over-consumption in Australia, a legacy from a society which had begun industrialisation in England before relocating to the colony and discovering that you never had to worry about devising ways of using the whole animal or preserving parts for later use, you could just grow more of the bits you liked and throw away the rest. His section on the popularity of canned meat both here and in England is quite disturbing. I much prefer the idea of making stinking, mouldy, preserved things at home and taking my chances eating them later, like my peasant ancestors.

sourdough

2007-06-05T15:46:00.000+10:00

sourdough starters aren’t rocket surgery. sometimes I think they might be like quantum physics though. the physicist Richard Feynman urged his students not to despair when they didn't understand quantum mechanics, because, he argued, no one understands quantum mechanics (1967, 1990). obviously that’s not the case for sourdough, some people in France seem to understand it, but myself, the more I learn about it the less I seem to know.

what I do know works most of the time, but like cheese, beer, wine and all the fermented things we so love, sometimes it just goes inexplicably wrong. having said that, I’ve got a method for use in a domestic kitchen that seems to work most of the time. (the problems associated with starters for domestic use include poor temperature and humidity control, not using the starter everyday, cross-contamination from other sources- like cheese mould).

if you bake bread everyday the Italian biga method is the easiest: keep a piece of dough out of your loaf, let it ferment overnight and add it to the next batch of dough (preferably don’t keep it more than a day or so). then keep aside another piece from the new dough and so on. I only bake bread once or twice a week so I find keeping a levain easier.

levain (takes 4 days)

for the initial fermentation:

make a small dough to start, using about ¼ cup of flour and a bit of water. leave it in a warmish place without a draught. it needs some air, so leave the lid of the container askew or cover it with a towel.

after 2 days it should have formed a crust. gently peel off the crust and discard. underneath it should be creamy and a bit bubbly, and smell sort of fruity or like beer. add double the previous quantity of flour, i.e. ½ a cup and mix to a dough with more water.

the next day peel the crust off again and add double the previous quantity of flour, i.e. 1 cup. mix to a dough with water again. In about 6 hours it should be ready to use. check that it is risen and a bit bubbly, and isn’t black (dead yeast) or bad-smelling (contaminated).

to make bread

take about half the starter and make it into a dough with additional flour, water, salt and oil. the guideline for ratio is that the starter should account for 1/3 to 1/6^th of the total dough volume. being innumerate, I just put in about 1 tablespoon of starter to each 100g of flour.

this kind of dough takes much longer to prove than a commercially yeasted dough. about 12 to 15 hours should be sufficient, depending on weather and environment. longer proving time (not over proving) develops more flavour.

slow proving doughs can be hand shaped initially or at an early second proving, or in a banneton or brotform basket from the beginning.

the dough may form a crust. this isn’t bad but does somewhat affect texture and the way the dough will bake. if the room is very dry you can spray the loaf with water occasionally or humidify the area with trays of water.

to keep the starter alive

after you’ve made the dough the starter needs to be replenished. you can feed the starter soon after making the dough, but not too much. if it’s not too hot you can leave the starter on a shelf somewhere and feed it a little flour and water everyday, mixing the crust back in each time if it’s still soft enough, until you’ve built it up again. or you can feed it and put it in the fridge, taking it out the day before you want to use it, feeding it again and allowing it to ferment for a day.

some useful resources

bakers in Melbourne: Dench, Babka, Noisette (84 Bay St, Port Melbourne); (shame about Wildflour being closed for now)

somebody else's comprehensive list of all things sourdough

Carole Field's indispensible book The Italian Baker

some video interviews and demonstrations by sourdough bakers

kid claypot

2007-05-30T12:32:00.001+10:00

Italians think goats are too stinky to eat unless they're still milk-fed, which they call capretto. so a while ago when I suggested to my father that I'd cook goat, he said he wouldn't eat it unless it was female and less than 8 weeks old. apparently the males smell stronger. the problem with this is female goats produce milk and milk makes cheese, so it seems better to eat the boys, and anyway it's not that easy to get really young goat.

so I decided to cook goat for JG and me anyway. it was a length of rib cage cut from a kid (though not so small as to be milk-fed. I have no idea what this cut should be called, I used to be vegetarian and am still somewhat carnivore-retarded). everything I'd read about cooking goat suggested that the meat is dry and strongly flavoured. not at all. after 3 hours stewing in a Japanese claypot this meat came out with a beautiful subtle flavour, not as strong as lamb, a little stronger than veal and with a coarser but moist, tender texture.

the dish is simple to make: most of the flavour comes from the spice blend and everything is put into the pot raw as in the method of Pakistani lamb dishes, as browning this kind of meat prior to cooking might cause it to toughen. goat is also a great claypot meat because it has very little fat, even with the skin on. if the raw cut seems very fibrous or has a lot of sinew it may be from an older goat and cooking time will need to be extended (I've read about people cooking goat for up to 22 hours but I think they're yokels who kill geriatric goats and play the banjo while sucking apple sauce through a straw). this excellent piece came from the Greek butcher at the Elizabeth St entrance of the Queen Victoria Market Meat Hall.

ingredients
1 kg goat ribcage, bones split in order to roll or fold into a claypot

2 onions, cut into eighths

2 carrots, roughly chopped

10 prunes

1 can tomatoes

1 cup white wine

1 teaspoon honey

2 teaspoons salt

for the spice paste
1 tablespoon cumin seeds, lightly roasted

1 tablespoon coriander seeds (not roasted)

seeds from 6 green cardamom pods

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

10 strands saffron

30 allspice berries

1/2 teaspoon ground cassia or cinnamon

2 teaspoons paprika

6 cloves garlic

juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons salt

method
grind the whole spices, then stir in the powders and lemon juice to form a paste. chopping the garlic first helps, and adding a little of the salt to each batch of whole seeds as you’re grinding makes easier work.

rub this all over the meat and into any cuts.

spread half of the carrot and onion on the base of the claypot and arrange the meat on top. scatter the rest of the carrot, onion and the prunes over and around the meat.

spoon half the tomato over the meat to prevent drying, then mix the remaining tomato with the wine, salt and honey, and carefully pour this over and around the meat.

bake in a sealed claypot at 150°c for 3 hours (seal up any holes with baking paper).

cheese update: brie

2007-05-28T10:37:00.000+10:00

I've always wanted my own round of brie. I love brie and one wedge cut from a round of Brie de Meaux is never enough for greedy cheese-munchers, it won't even see the weekend out. No, we need whole rounds of the stuff, so I decided to make one. We cut into it with trepidation last night and we're pleasantly surprised that it's actually very good.

a brie matures in a distinctive way due to the shape: the round should dry to at least 20cm in diameter and should be made with about 7 litres of milk. it takes at least 6 weeks to mature, with most of the maturation activity occurring towards the end of the resting period.

this attempt was something of an afterthought when I was making other cheese and had some cows milk left, so it was made with only 4 litres of milk. the result is a full diameter round but not as thick as a proper brie, which matured much faster with a firm, slightly dry paste. the cheese was probably perfectly ripe at about 17 days, but we cut into it at day 22 and it had begun to dry out and firm up. it's like a very soft, smooth cheddar with a brie rind and flavour, rather than an oozing, creamy paste.

brie relies on rennet for curd formation more than lactic fermentation, so the initial fermentation period is only about 90 minutes. the curd is then cut (left) and gently turned over a few times in the whey over about 40 minutes. it's then poured into the ring or hoop which will form the round, lined with cheesecloth to allow the whey to drain off. the curds gently compact into a smooth paste as they drain under their own weight, being inverted a few times over about 8 hours. the round then sits overnight to dry.

salt is an integral part of cheese, for preservation, tempering the action of bacteria and of course flavour. there are different ways of salting: brie is placed in a saturated brining solution when it is about 24 hours old. cheese absorbs salt from brine at a rate determined by the size and shape, so we reduced the recommended brining time for a full sized brie (2.5 hours) to 90 minutes for our flat round. JG shouldered the hefty responsibility of this stage alone (one of my colleagues thought that was a touching sign of trust). the cheese then dries for another day.

as with all mould-affected cheese, brie then goes into a humid environment for about 8 days to allow the Penicillum candidum to bloom. after this phase the cheese just needs to rest somewhere at roughly 12°c while the enzymes digest the protiens and lactose in the curd. the bottom of the cupboard behind the coffee mugs is the coolest place I could think of, but probably not 12°c. this may have contributed to the accelerated maturation, but the results are good nonetheless.

next cheese update: more crottins

zucchini frittata

2007-05-24T13:46:00.000+10:00

I want to write to write about this dish because
(1) I have a terrible hangover, which requires comfort food (in fact I couldn't even eat this right now- maybe in a few hours)
(2) I read The Elegant Sufficiency post about dishes associated with memories of people and I'm thinking about my grandfather, Giorgio.

this was what he used to make when I'd turn up unannounced, at odd times or after late lectures. I imagine he used to eat it quite often dining solo, just accompanied with a thick piece of crusty pasta dura and glass of his own wine. he had a huge vegetable garden and always had loads of zucchini and broad beans in the season, and he used to let some of the zucchini grow enormous before picking them, and peel off the tough skin before cooking them.

I used to like watching Giorgio prepare this dish because I thought the way he'd throw salt into cooking by the handful and slosh in loads of olive oil was very naughty, so unlike my mother's careful use of such things. that's probably why this comforting dish tastes so good. he used to make it in a well-worn little aluminium frypan, which works well for a small frittata, but I find it much easier to bake anything bigger than this; you get a lighter, more even result.

4 eggs
1 medium zucchini (peeled if desired) and diced
4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
a handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley
a lot of salt
a little bit of pepper
about 4 tablespoons of olive oil

beat the eggs until just mixed, then add the salt, pepper and parsley.

fry the zucchini until soft and starting to colour a little.

add the garlic and fry for another minute, then pour in the eggs and stir.

as the bottom starts to set scrape it to the centre of the frypan, allow the bottom to set again and repeat the process.

cook the frittata with the lid on over a low to medium heat, checking that the base isn't burning. cook to your liking (I like mine a bit soft, if you want a well cooked frittata finish it off under the grill).

serves 2, with bread (and wine- but not with a hangover).

princess superstar turns 5

2007-05-22T15:08:00.001+10:00

yes, it really is a post about my dog's birthday, and I do know that's a bit sad (JG observed that I "get all fuckin' weird around dogs", it's true), but she's my baby and there is a recipe attached, it's all perfectly ok.

tiny orange and lemon tarts seemed like a good choice for a doggie birthday, because they're small and somewhat twee in keeping with the nature of the event, and it seems slightly less wrong than presenting the dog with a slice of cake (I personally have no problem with that but some people find it strange...) Sylvie Destructor (so named after her childhood flatmate the yabby - L. Cherax destructor - although in her case the term was an adjective, not species epithet) is a big chocolate fan, and although she's survived many chocolate indulgences in her five years I thought the folks might have me committed or arrested for feeding her chocolate (next time Sylv, when they're not looking). also she does quite like a bit of citrus, especially orange and mandarin peelings (I've never starved her, honest, she's just genetically predisposed to indiscriminate gluttony), and she's been known to substitute lemons for tennis balls without any fuss. but the lemon curd filling initially wasn't too well received:

but no self-respecting gluttonous canine could resist the lure of sweet orange pastry (I had to turn it pastry side up to quell her suspicion of the lemon curd, then she was all for it).

orange and lemon tarts

makes 12 tarts using a regular 12-hole muffin tray or small single-use foil cases

for the pastry
120g plain flour

60g butter

60g icing sugar

finely grated zest of half an orange

a few squeezes of orange juice

for the filling
about 3/4 cup of lemon curd

rub the flour, butter and sugar together until the mixture is like sand.

mix in the orange zest, then add just enough orange juice to form a dough.

knead a little until smooth (this is a short dough and won't become elastic).

cut paper bases for the muffin holes (if using).

the pastry can't be rolled, so start with a small ball, flatten it between your palms to form a disc and then lay this in the tray or case and work the pastry from the centre up the sides until you have a tart shell about 1.5cm deep (the pastry may shrink a little during baking).

place a small bit of foil on the base of each one and use a few dried beans or something as a weight to ensure the pastry doesn't puff up.

bake at 170°c for about 15 minutes or until the pastry is cooked.

cool slightly then remove from tray or case (the good thing about using a muffin pan for shallow tarts is that you can turn it upside down and bash it until they come out, which doesn't usually work for muffins- I am completely inept at all things muffin and friand and would probably invest in those weird flexible rubbery tin things if I was into that sort of baking).

allow the pastry tart shells to cool completely and then fill each one with a tablespoon of lemon curd.

lemon curd

2007-05-18T15:39:00.000+10:00

the terrible associative power of the human mind means that if you're trying to diet, you can't read a book about food because you will be compelled to get off the couch and eat, not of your own volition, and there's nothing you can do about it (apparently some people have willpower, I'm not sure how this works...) so I was listening to Alain de Botton talk about his house to someone from the BBC whom he'd let in there for a bit of a tour, and he started talking about the picture of lemons he has hanging on his wall. it's nice to have a picture of lemons, he said, because it changes your mood as it reminds you of the beauty in the everyday, and if you have it in your house it reminds you that there is beauty and dignity in the everydayness of home and family life. I have to say I like his slightly precious philosophies on the way our environments affect us emotionally, and I could certainly get all squishy inside about lemons as a symbolic feature of home if I wasn't so busy thinking about eating lemon curd.

I have a staple lemon curd recipe which has no cream, and isn't as rich as the egg yolk only types, and I it favour because (I know it's only lemon curd, not bloody philosophy) I prefer not to separate eggs unless the albumen and yolk will be reunited in the end in a cosmic expression of fecundity and completeness (don't worry, I'm not a creationist or anything, quite the opposite). think about it, lots of dishes are designed around this perspective, like oeufs à la neige or almond bread and zabaglione, or JG's scheme to get pavlova for dessert by making pasta carbonara for dinner (ok, not quite, but it fits with my egg cosmology!).

Stephanie Alexander has an interesting note in The Cook's Companion about the rather counter-intuitive fact of the lemon juice acidty mitigating the risk of the fats splitting during cooking, which means go ahead and heat without fear, it'll probably work out (or at least be slightly less afraid than for making custard...)

whole egg lemon curd

zest and juice of 4 lemons

2 large eggs

150g caster sugar

100g butter

3 teaspoons pure cornflour (or more if you want the curd to set firm when chilled)

method
this is totally no fuss: put everything into the one saucepan (you could beat the eggs a bit before adding the other stuff if you wanted) and start to heat it slowly over direct heat, stirring to melt the butter and sugar.

once everything is smooth use medium heat and just keep stirring until it thickens (about 7-8 minutes).

turn the heat down and stir for another minute or two to ensure smoothness.

it's best to put the saucepan into a sink of cold water at this point to avoid a cooked-egg flavour, but keep stirring to prevent splitting (this doesn't need to take long, just enough to bring it down from the high cooking temperature).

it'll firm up when chilled (if there's any left to chill...) and can be used as a filling for pastries, especially with a little extra cornflour.

good things about turning 30

2007-05-10T12:27:00.000+10:00

along with 'Employment Opportunities for History Majors' this is clearly going to be one of the shortest posts ever written. I really just need to say this:

chocolate cake base, with a layer of gooshy chocolate mousse, topped with a squidgy vanilla custard followed by another layer of chocolate mousse, more cake, and finished with a proper chocolate ganache.

actually, I could also add this:

a slab of real white chocolate (not that dodgy compound stuff), some other chocolatey bits poking out, and a dab of gold leaf. A fine condolence for the fact that I came to work on my birthday.

that's it. the only good thing about turning 30.

(oh, there's also getting spoilt by everyone I know, especially the gorgeous JG, and having many more excuses than usual to drink with all the people I love - I need more excuses ?!, and then there's those crayfish, but that's for another post.)

almond cakes

2007-05-07T15:22:00.000+10:00

some delicious almond cakes were the victims of a series nighttime attacks on the fridge this week. I'd forgotten how good they are after the post-nineties disinterest that came with seeing "flahr-luss" la-la cakes on every café menu in Melbourne. bog-standard wedges of dry cake with obligatory icing sugar and blob of cream on the side.

such uninspired thoughts were banished by JG's almond and orange cake, an interpretation of the classic Sephardic recipe from Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food (both editions). it's so dense and moist it's more like a pudding than a cake, and rather than boiling the oranges whole for two hours as in the original recipe (a good way to kill a saucepan), JG cooked the oranges sliced in a spiced sugar syrup which was later reduced and mixed with a little sweet balsamic vinegar to make a sweet-tart-orange-bitter sauce for serving.

the other unfortunate cake to be devoured was a beautiful almond and lemon cake with lemon curd and marscapone filling made by my gorgeous sister. this was more cake-like in texture due to a mixture of self-raising flour and ground almonds, and had a delicious brown sugar and slightly caramelised lemon flavour.

almond and orange cake
6 eggs
250g ground almonds
250g caster sugar
2 oranges
1 teaspoon baking powder

slice the oranges thickly (leaving the peel on) and simmer in just enough water to cover, plus two tablespoons of sugar and some cinnamon, allspice and cardamom. when the oranges are soft drain the slices, reserving the syrup. chop the oranges finely or pulse in a food processor. allow to cool a bit.

beat the eggs and sugar then mix in the oranges.

add the ground almonds and baking powder and beat to a smooth batter.

bake for about an hour at 200°c in a lined tin. if it seems too moist return it to the oven for 5 minutes.

turn the cake out and serve warm with icecream and orange syrup.

orange syrup
if there's not enough syrup to reduce add more water (or orange juice) and sugar then reduce over a medium heat until you have the desired thickness. stir in 3 teaspoons of sweet balsamic vinegar and allow the mixture to cool a little before using.

LB's almond and lemon cake
as LB's advice was not to measure anything, "just slop everything in until it tastes right", these quantities may be a little off.

100g self-raising flour
150g ground almonds
100g butter, softened
200g brown sugar
4 eggs
zest and juice of 1 lemon
a few drops of vanilla essence

for the filling or topping
lemon curd
marsacpone

mix the butter, sugar, lemon juice, zest and vanilla until well combined.

add the eggs and mix well.

stir in the ground almonds and mix until smooth.

sift the flour and gently fold into the mixture. check batter for sweetness and consistency, adjusting with almonds or egg as necessary.

bake one large cake for about an hour at 170°c or two smaller ones for 25-35 minutes.

this cake doesn't rise much but for a perfectly flat cake trim the top and turn over. use the lemon curd and marscapone mixture as an icing or filling.

black pudding

2007-05-04T17:49:00.001+10:00

I'm glad I bought this book even though it was a they-don't-have- the-book-I-want- but-I'm-not- leaving-without-a- new-book kind of purchase (realistically, if it wasn't that it would've been a new handbag... there is no rationality when retail desire strikes). also I did quite like The Age article on Reynaud's visit to Australia. and when I opened the book for a flick-thru in the bookstore the first thing I saw was a photo of some piggy dish with a big gooey slab of Saint-Marcellin cheese melted on top. you see, what choice did I have?

anyway I didn't get near the book again for quite a while because JG sequestered it immediately, enthusing over all things porcine and planning the assembling of his own pig-killing team (underwhelming response so far).

JG's only criticism of the book is the lack of explicit instructions for actually killing and dressing your own pig. this, clearly, is a benefit for most other readers (he's not weird or anything, he just grew up on a sheep farm so killing your own animals is normal, kind of...) instead Pork & Sons is a rather sweet and sometimes strange homage to Reynaud's grandparents, his hometown and his friends, and a document of what was once an integral part of family and village life in France (and also in Italy - my father can remember pig-killings in his village Circello, near Napoli, where they say that a man who marries is happy for a day, but he who kills a pig is happy for a year). there is in fact, nothing particularly disturbing about this book, although for an ex-vegetarian of many years I have achieved an extraordinary suspension of morality. so much so that while some committed carnivores won't even eat black pudding, I'm right there, totally into it, totally dig it.

JG's black pudding inspired by a dish from Reynaud's book could possibly change a few minds.

black pudding with pear and beetroot crostini

we used morcilla, the Spanish variety of blood sausage. I think an Italian sanguinaccio would also work in place of the French type of sausage but English style black pudding might be too sweet. this entry should really be labeled 'small tasty things', but we are somewhat gluttonous and ate this as a big main event.

for 2 (I did mention we were gluttonous)

2 blood sausages, in half-centimetre slices
1 onion, chopped
2 pears, cut into eighths
3 medium beetroots, each cut into about 6 wedges
half a teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
4 slices of ciabatta or similar bread, at least 2 cm thick and 12cm long
3 garlic cloves, smashed
oil for frying

boil or steam the beetroot wedges until tender.

fry the onion with the salt in a large frypan over a medium heat to slowly caramelise. when the edges are browning add the sugar and vinegar and stir for a few minutes.

add the pear slices and cook these to the desired softness, then remove and set aside.

add the sausage slices to the onion and raise the heat a little. stir continuously to ensure the sausage cooks but the onion doesn't burn. add the beetroot and stir everything well to mix the flavours.

in another frypan heat quite a lot of oil and add the garlic, cooking aver a medium heat until the garlic just colours to flavour the oil. remove the garlic then turn up the heat and fry the bread on both sides until you have crisp, golden crostini.

place two crostini on each plate then lay the pear slices on top with a little space in between. fill the gaps with the beetroot and onions and arrange the sausage slices on top. garnish with long chive strands.

the arancini of napoli

2007-05-04T09:15:00.000+10:00

with the possible exception of weird deep-fried glue often called "risotto balls" on some café menus, arancini in all their permutations are great. as with most cross-regional dishes in Italy, the version of arancini or whatever you call them (arancini meaning 'little oranges') from your paesa (your 'place') is better than that of your neighbours. this of course carries over to the new country, so here I've seen a few variations. there are the golf-ball sized fairly plain rice balls in the northern style. the Siciliano who will hopefully one day marry my sister makes fantastic arancini rossi, pear-shaped with meat and tomato inside the rice, and my friend ET tells me her boyfriend's Calabrese mama makes a beautiful bianca type filled with mozzarella.

but the arancini that I fell in love with were from a tiny friggatore (a fryer- not much else in the shop except a counter and a grumpy cook) in a grungy part of Naples where you also get weed, cheap booze and all-night bars (obviously the perfect location for a kitchen that fries things- no shortage of customers with the munchies).

this is what I recreated and documented when I got home, before the memory of that wonderful cheesey ball eaten out of a torn-off bit of paper in Piazza Carità faded from my tastebuds.

arancini bianci
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 bay leaves
1 cup of arborio rice or other short rice suitable for risotto
brodo* or stock or stockcubes dissolved in water
1 egg, beaten
up to 1 cup of grated parmesan
150g taleggio or other semi-soft washed rind cheese, cut into 1.5cm cubes

to make the balls
fry the onion in plenty of olive oil over a medium heat and add some salt.

when the onion is soft but not brown, add the pepper, bay leaves and oregano (remember to fish the bay leaves out at the end).

stir in the rice and gently fry it for a minutes, then slowly add some brodo.
basically this is like cooking a firm risotto, so keep adding enough brodo to cook the rice without making a creamy consistency.

(as an aside, a creamy risotto is partly the result of constantly stirring the rice and knocking the starch about. for arancini less stirring of the rice while cooking will help to keep the grains intact and produce less starch outside the grains so they'll bind nicely with the egg and cheese.)

once the rice is cooked al dente and you have a reasonably firm mixture (it will firm up more as it cools) cool it to room temperature or lower, then add the beaten egg and the parmesan.

shape the mixture into balls of whatever size you like and poke a cube of taleggio into the middle of each one, closing the rice around it. (having a bit of olive oil on your hands and the surface where the rolled balls are resting makes this way less icky.)

now the balls are ready to crumb and fry.

*brodo, or 'broth' is lighter in flavour and salt than an English stock or a French bouillon. stock cubes diluted more than usual will work fine for this (but generally contain wheat- check the ingredients.)

for the breadcrumbs
roll each ball in flour, dip into beaten egg and then roll in breadcrumbs.
fry in peanut oil (or other light oil) at least deep enough to come halfway up the balls, then roll them over and fry the other side when golden (or go the whole deep-fry)

for a wheat-free version
for my dear friend SS I make a wheat-free crumb coating: dip the balls straight into beaten egg and then into a 'crumb' mixture of coarsley ground pistachios and polenta. a white froth might come out of these when you fry them, which sticks to the arancini, I think this is just the fat expelled from the nuts.

the crottin de chavignol that didn't kill us

2007-05-01T12:51:00.000+10:00

well JG and I ate my first cheese last night, and we're both still alive. actually, it wasn't really my first cheese, we also survived a chèvre which I made two weekends ago, but that's pretty hard to fuck up. not exactly living in the edge.

the first matured cheese I made was a blend of goat and cows milk in the style of a crottin de Chavignol. crottin is one of the French farmhouse types of slowly ripened lactic acid cheeses, where most of "curd work" is done by bacteria forming lactic acid and very little rennet is required. this means, among other things, a long setting period (24 hours for this batch) and a creamy, sometimes semi-liquid interior which forms under the rind. Saint-Marcellin is another favourite example of this method. I really love this kind of gooey mouldy cheese, so I decided to bypass the usuall beginners cheeses and suffer the possible consequences (at best, failure; at worst, unwittingly culturing a deadly strain of bacteria). I was particularly inspired to make a crottin style because I so much love the fantastic Mature Veloute by Holy Goat.

there are so many types of cheese for which production methods are not well documented, particularly those that originated in smaller villages for family consumption only rather than market production, such as crottin and cabecou (although interest in these is increasing), so while an experienced cheesemaker might not have too much trouble figuring out the process, I have been piecing together snippets of information in order to gain a picture of how a crottin should be produced. fascinating fact #467 is that "crottin" is a colloquial term in the Chavignol region for horse shit. so I knew my cheese needed to have the appearance of horse shit. that was a good start.

this is the method I came up with:
The cheese milk sits for about 24 hours at about 22°c, and the whey becomes quite sour although the curd eventually becomes sweeter with maturation (when I first took the lid off the pot after setting it smelled a bit like
cheap white wine).

rather than ladling the curd straight into the crottin baskets for draining I hung it in cheesecloth first as my crottin baskets are masterpieces I made myself with food storage containers and a hot nail (no photo of that particular stage, because it looks like I was making a bomb).
anyway I was concerned they wouldn't drain as efficiently as the purpose-designed baskets so I gave the curd a bit of a head start hanging over the sink in bags.

once the drained curds were in the baskets they continued to drain and formed a white fluffy layer of mould due to the addition of penicillum candidum. this bloomed very fast, mostly because I couldn't keep the temperature cool enough in my "cheese cave" (a stryrofoam drug transport box). they need to spend the first 8 days or so in a high humidity "cave environment" at 10-14°c (depending on who you read), however all of this was purely academic because my cave rarely stayed below 15°c despite my diligent efforts with ice and ice bricks (my only conclusion at this point is that styrofoam is shite and I am dreaming up a new cheese this very minute.)

after 8 days and more research, I figured that they probably should've been turned out of the baskets earlier, so last night I did that and the first thing I discovered was that the mould rind had only developed on the top exposed surface. the second thing I discovered was that the bit I got on my finger tasted really good and not at all toxic.

despite thinking we should really wait a few more days (although I now know that people eat crottin at almost any stage from very fresh to about 3 weeks old, some even more mature), we decided to
eat the little mini-crottin I made immediately.

although this little round was mostly naked due to not forming a rind in the basket, the rinded side was exactly what I'd hoped to achieve: a well-flavoured mould rind with a layer of liquid under the surface and a soft creamy centre.

the remaining full-sized crottins are going to continue maturing in a styrofoam box in the fridge (if only to retain humidity from the layer of water in the bottom) and I will see how this affects the mould and rind formation over the next week (if we let them live that long- they're pretty tasty).

claudia roden

2007-04-27T17:19:00.000+10:00

being attached to my computer in this dungeon by a wire and small speakers in a cruel twist of economic fate (mortgage) was actually quite ok this morning because Radio National's Book Show featured a couple of recordings of Claudia Roden talking about her newest book. she talks about her passion for collecting and recording recipes and the things people do and say in their kitchens. hers is a particularly beautiful kind of anthopology, which is what makes her such an engaging writer. Roden's subjects, participants or informers are not estranged from her as with some anthropologists, they are people who have shared something with her, and while she regards documentation as an important outcome it's as much about the process of meeting, understanding and giving something to people along the way.

I find particularly interesting Roden's discussion of innovation versus tradition in cooking. she sees innovation and fusion as a specific kind of cultural change, but instead of being caused by the mixing and merging of ideas which influences characteristics and behaviours in other cultural fulcrums, food cultures are to some extent directed by publishers and the perceived reader demand for newness. this is all fine but as Roden points out, it's a fast track to losing origins and meanings. i find it comforting that there is this kind of discussion about recording and acknowledging tradition, because I sometimes feel that my pedantic documentation of original source material, secondary references and changes made to recipes is somewhere between mildly didactic and tragically boring for people who ask for recipes.

the BBC have published some recipes from Arabesque here.

tortured olives

2007-04-26T15:48:00.000+10:00

i found these great olives, just picked, at the Collingwood Farmers' Market, they were beautiful and fat and I couldn't wait to eat them. in my impatience I searched every reference for the shortest curing method I could find, and finding nothing suitably hasty I decided on a saturated brine solution (drastic, I know).

not content with just a sodium overdose, I first blanched the olives in boiling water, then JG cut a slit into each one before we poured the over hot brine solution. we were thinking that would take perhaps a week, but after two days the olives were beginning to shrivel and wrinkle.

by the third day I feared I might have ruined them, so I opened the jar. surprisingly they were still slightly bitter, but soft and beautifully flavoured and essentially ready (if you have a sodium fetish, as we do).

I blanched them again in boiling water to get rid of some salt and then put them back in the jar with the mildest brine solution, which is mitigating the saltiness and bitterness as we're eating them.

it sounds like a terrible abuse of good olives, and results in some uneven softness of the fruit, but it means eating delicious home cured olives in three days.

roasted hazelnuts

2007-04-26T12:16:00.000+10:00

freshly roasted hazelnuts and almonds are a taste which i've become slightly obsessive about, necessitating documentation of the perfect roasting method (separately however- they have different needs). the key to a good roasted hazelnut is a lower heat during roasting but not such a long cooking time that they dry out. they should be crunchy right through without being too browned on the outer, which makes them bitter. you want them to give up a little bit of oil on the outside so they smell and taste good.

pre-heat the oven to about 155°c and have the shelf in the middle.

put as many hazelnuts (with brown skins, no shells) as you can eat in one layer on a baking tray (without oil) and bake for 15-20 minutes. This is a guide only, it depends on your oven. Once the nuts start to give off a scent check to see if they're darkening at all. When they're done the papery skins will have darkened and shrivelled and the nut flesh will be lightly golden.

shake the tray once or twice during baking to even them out.

when they've cooled enough to handle rub the brown skins off either between your fingers (this is an easy way to eat large amounts of them before they even get to be part of any other dish) or wrap them in a tea towel and rub.

the nuts will get crunchier as they cool.

shortbread

2007-04-24T14:10:00.000+10:00

after reading many a fiesty debate over the proper flours and shapes for shortbread I've settled on this recipe. I have also made a traditional rice flour version based on these proportions but found it too granular for my liking, although a finer rice flour would probably work well.

100g fine to medium wheatflour
100g butter (salted or unsalted and cultured, depending on your liking - I like salted)
50g caster sugar
50g pure cornflour

cut butter into flours (this can be done with a food processor) and then finish to a coarse crumble mixture by hand.
add sugar and mix.
dump the dough on a clean work surface and bring it together first by squeezing, then gently kneading.
the more kneading, the firmer the resulting biscuit, a fact that can be used to suit different purposes. A light crumbly dough that's been barely kneaded can be difficult to cut when cooked so it's best to shape this kind before baking. Otherwise the dough can be spread on a tray to the desired thickness and baked in one piece, then cut while still warm. traditional shapes include fans and bars pricked with a fork.

baking
baking shortbread requires the perfect balance between time and temperature. in most ovens 160°c will work best. the dough needs a high enough temperature to maintain shape without melting before it's cooked, but not so high that the butter in the dough begins to brown. baking time will depend on thickness, but as they'll crisp up when cooled it's best to err on the side of less time if unsure. as a guide, 8mm thick bars would require about 20 minutes. when the base is no longer doughy they're probably about right.
the delicate texture of the crumb is easily ruined by condensation so they need to be transferred to a cooling rack as soon as they come out of the oven.

hazelnuts
obviously there are numerous flavoursome things you can add to shortbread if you're not a traditionalist. my favourite is a handful of roughly chopped roasted hazelnuts.

sweet pastry staple recipe (paté sablée)

2007-04-24T13:07:00.000+10:00

this is my staple sweet pastry adapted from Christine Manfield's paté sablée. this is a small quantity, enough for a 22cm tart case (too much left over would be a bad thing), but this recipe can easily be tripled without adjustment for a large dessert

100g flour (I use plain cake flour but it can contain up to 30% tipo "00" without the sides caving in)
50g butter
40g icing sugar
1 egg, beaten
a small grating of lemon zest
a drop of vanilla essence
a pinch of salt if using unsalted butter

rub the butter and flour together then add the sugar and rub to a fine crumbly texture, like sand (sablée).
add the lemon, vanilla and salt if using and mix a little.
gradually add egg by the teaspoonful, mixing lightly in between to check for formation and stickiness (probably not more than 3 teaspoons will be necessary).
bring the dough together and knead gently only for a couple of folds - the less handling the better.
refrigerate the dough for about 20 minutes.
butter the flan tin or tart case then press the pastry across the bottom and sides in pieces or slices until you have an even shell with a little overhang.
put the tin back in the fridge while preheating the oven to 160°c, this will help stop the pastry shrinking.
trim any overhang just before baking, then blind bake the pastry case with weights for 15-25 minutes depending on whether it will be used for a baked filling.

warm soft gooey chocolate pudding

2007-04-23T16:26:00.000+10:00

inspired by the version made at cicciolina

for 4

150g chocolate

75g butter

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

3 tbsp pl flour

1/3 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 190° c.

Butter and flour 4 small ramekins.

Melt butter and chocolate together.

Whisk eggs, sugar and flour to a batter then

add cooled chocolate. Mix until just combined,

too much aeration will cook the centre of the puddings,

and these are best with a gooey centre in a cakey shell.

Bake for 8-12 minutes depending on your gooey desires.

At 12 minutes the puddings will most likely be entirely

cooked through.

Serve hot with cold pouring cream for the centre.

They can be carefully unmoulded but will have a floury

outer, which can be dusted with icing sugar or

cocoa.

2007-04-18T17:14:00.000+10:00

A chronicle of two food tragics

2007-04-17T16:14:00.000+10:00

It's time to get the archive off the ancient Mac before the poor thing dies.
This is an archive of the vast collection of recipes I have read, eaten, cooked or dreamt about over the years. It should be searchable, (don't try just yet though, there's naught there), for those people who ask me for recipes. It's also a chronicle of the culinary exploits of me (VB, like the beer, although slightly less bitter) and JG (love of my life; brilliant cook; many other things besides).