high times on rivoli bay

"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.

the curse of the bouillabaisse

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".

fish for friends

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.

spice up your pub life

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.

pork belly

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.

hero dish: parmigiana di melanzane

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.

kid claypot

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).

black pudding

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.