Cooking Down Under - The Blog

Storm in a D-cup

2008-10-04T18:12:00.005+10:00

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recently asked Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, US co-founders of Ben and Jerry’s to replace cow’s milk in their ice cream products with human breast milk.

This followed news that Hans Locher, (below) owner of the Swiss restaurant Storchen had been advertising for women donors to provide breast milk for some of his recipes. He was offering just over £3 ($AUD6.82, $US5.30) for 14 ounces (415 mls) and said he would need about five litres to put a menu together.

He said he started experimenting with breast milk when his daughter was born. "One can cook really delicious things with it. However, it always needs to be mixed with a bit of whipped cream, in order to keep the consistency."

I just hope he wasn’t depriving his daughter. I know supply usually adjusts to demand, and the more milk a baby takes, the more the mother will produce (otherwise how could she accommodate twins?). But I do think a new mother has enough to do without getting into a totally bovine state. Anyone who has experienced the rush to get home to feed a baby, only to spring a mammary leak at the supermarket checkout, knows it takes a while to fine-tune these things.

No doubt breast pumps have become more sophisticated in recent times, thanks to all those nursing mothers who’ve had to return to the workforce and take breaks during the day to express milk. Or maybe Mr Locher planned a milking shed out the back of his restaurant at the exclusive Winterthur resort – complete with pasteurisation plant?

And, at the end of the day, would customers be keen to sample mother’s milk sauces, soups, custards or whatever the chef dreams up? What if the breast milk brulee proved to be a huge success and demand outstripped supply? Could the milking mothers charge more? Or if chef asked them to consume vanilla pods or orange zest for flavoured milk?

Well, all that’s largely academic now. While the food control authority in Switzerland doesn’t list humans as approved milk-producing species like cows and sheep, humans weren’t on the banned list - which includes apes and primates - either. And so the authorities stepped in and banned the project.

Meanwhile Ben and Jerry’s, in response to the PETA letter, issued the following statement: "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child."

Well, that was what PETA appeared to be hoping for, pointing out that cow's milk was for baby calves.

It doesn’t look like breast milk will be featuring on any dessert or ice cream menus any time soon. I'm sticking with cow's milk in my ice cream machine, thanks...

Fashion victim

2008-09-23T11:03:00.007+10:00

I had an email from son Ben the other day: “Naughty Woman is famous.”

Naughty Woman has been a part of my family since the early 70s when, in a sudden attack of altruism, I saved her life. She was down on her luck. The business where she worked – a Wellington milliner’s – had closed down thanks to changing fashion.

I could relate to that. When I first started work, I’d gone along to weekly millinery classes at a local high school with some girlfriends. We learned the gentle art of snipping, sewing, steaming and moulding felt bases into works of art. We wired the brims, embellished the shapes with feathers and fabric and flowers, stitched in headbands and were soon turning out masterpieces for friends and family.

I’d sit on buses studying the hats around me, getting ideas. I invested in my own wooden milliner’s block where I could work on my current project. Mum started wearing my new creations out and about. I remodelled some of my Nana’s hats.

The classes ended but I continued making hats – for a while. Then fickle fashion changed. Hats were out, hair was in. Instead of covering our tresses, we exploited them, grew them, teased them into Beehives, or rolled them into large curls and pinned them carefully in place.

There was no place on our towering hair for hats. And milliners were going out of business. And that’s when I met Naughty Woman. I was trotting down Willis Street to work when I noticed Gamages hat shop was having a closing-down sale. I couldn’t help myself. I went in for a look and there she was, perched on a bench, a resigned faraway look in her eye – and jobless. What would it take to save her after her many years of service? “Two dollars,” I was told. I paid my money and tucked the milliner’s dummy under my arm.

I took her back to my office and installed her in the top tier of my In, Out and Procrastinate trays. She was christened Hortense after Hortense de Lanvin. The latter was a shop manikin that was being flown first class round the world at the time to publicise the House of Lanvin.

When I left work to have my first baby, Hortense came home with me. She ended up on a shelf in the wardrobe.

A few years later, when my sons were looking for “dress-ups”, they found her and soon had her decked out in my mother’s old silver fox fur – one of those ones complete with foxhead, beady glass eyes and dangling, boneless legs.

“We’re playing with Naughty Woman,” they told me, as they tried on my old clothes and the discarded Sydney wigs. I have no idea how they arrived at that name, but it stuck and Naughty Woman is still with us.

Her guest appearance on my last blog prompted the email from Ben. Naughty Woman proved an obliging prop and I’m tempted to invite her back from time to time, particularly with racing's Spring Carnival coming up.

Naughty Woman's timely fashion tip: To revive the artificial flowers on a hat or fascinator, hold them carefully over a boiling kettle spout for a few seconds and the steam will perk up the petals.

Blind faith

2008-09-08T12:00:00.013+10:00

Darling, I think I may have eaten the candle...

I see the Sheraton Hotel in Edinburgh is introducing blindfold dining next month. Guests at the Grill Room are being offered a mystery five-course menu. They will neither know nor see what they are eating.

I can think of a few meals I’ve had where a blindfold might have been a blessing. Think pale globby stew, watery mash, greasy batter, soggy greens, doughy desserts.

Sheraton chef Malcolm Webster wants his customers “to fall in love with the food's true taste, letting the aromas, textures and varying combinations of flavours do all the work by taking away the sense which we rely on the most – sight."

Well, I’d be happy to try it once. But frankly, I think the sight of a beautifully arranged dish really takes a dining experience to another level. I like to study the arrangement, identify the component parts, admire the ingenuity used by the chef in composing the visual aspect of the meal. The look of a good dish does as much to whet my appetite as its aroma.

A blindfold meal will certainly condense the experience to the senses of smell, taste and probably touch but the idea of stabbing round a plate and ending up with a forkful of lemon wedge, groping through the foliage, gaily dripping sauce down the silk blouse or propelling a mini beetroot at the white shirt across the table makes me a little nervous.

Will chefs be forced to select meat that doesn’t require precise surgery, ingredients that won’t stain? Imagine trying to deal with quail!

Will the diner be given an orientation course – “The meat is at 12 o’clock, the sauce at 3, vegetables between 4.30 and 9.”

Can one bring a seeing-eye friend to provide navigation hints – “A little to the left and you’ll find the six peas… oops, missed again!”

Then there’s the whole fraught business of maintaining water glasses and wine glasses in an upright position.

And how on earth does one summon the waiter when you can’t see him pretending he can’t see you?

Vision is one of a number of factors influencing the amount of food consumed during a meal. The better it looks, the more inclined we are to eat it. For some, that can be food’s downfall. The importance of vision in regulating eating behaviour was demonstrated in a study conducted at the Obesity Unit, Huddinge University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. The obese subjects observed ate 24 percent less food blindfolded without feeling less full. They probably just got tired of trying to capture it and get it into their mouths – a bit like eating with chopsticks.

I wonder how long it will be before Celebrity Chef X introduces his new miracle weight-loss recipe book Eating in the Dark (based on the TV programme of the same name)...

Australia - a nation of tossers?

2008-09-01T13:22:00.009+10:00

Australians are tossing out food like it’s going out of fashion. While obesity is an ever-present concern, apparently there’s plenty of food that doesn’t pass the lips, let alone settle on the hips. Instead, here in Australia, according to the latest figures, we are discarding 3,000,000 tonnes of food annually. That translates to a whopping 145kg for each one of us. And that has prompted Notebook magazine to launch a campaign to stop food wastage in Australia.

Some experts believe Australians are throwing out about 20 percent of the food they buy, environmentalist and Planet Ark founder Jon Dee writes in the latest issue of Notebook. Personally, I am a bit sceptical about that. Are we really chucking out one in five bags of food groceries? Is this all domestic wastage?

I decided to examine my own food wastage. It’s mostly the tail end of a loaf of bread, or fruit and vegetables that have got past their best because no one has been home for meals. While onions, potatoes, carrots and parsnips are all good keepers, tomatoes, lettuces and other salad vegetables are not, and they can’t be frozen. When I restock the fridge with fresh produce each week, inevitably there are odd pieces of broccoli and other greens that proved to be too much for one meal, not enough for two. Along with the slightly flaccid celery and bendy leeks, they can be made into soup – in the winter. However, inevitably there are one or two casualties in the vegetable drawer cull.

I used to keep a bowl of fruit on the kitchen bench. It was frequently untouched, except by me. Then one of the sons suggested I leave it on the dining table so people could reach for a piece of fruit after a meal. That’s meant less wastage.

I’ve stopped buying more than four or five bananas at a time. No one eats the spotty ones and no one likes banana cake so there’s not much point in wasting eggs, butter, sugar and flour making one only to throw it out further down the month.

Bargain quantities of apples and oranges are a similar waste of time in our house. Who sits down and peels themselves an orange these days? No, it has to be a quick and easy mandarin to coax anyone in my family to eat citrus. Grapes also disappear quickly because there’s no prepping involved apart from a rinse – and I usually do that.

This week’s discards included a persimmon I’d forgotten about, a bunch of Vietnamese mint and a bunch of basil. I normally buy basil that is still growing but there was only cut basil available when I needed it. I used half and the rest expired within two days as expected. A couple of mandarins looked dodgy. There was about 2cms of salami lost behind the yoghurt. One the whole, there wasn’t much wastage. The tail end of the pumpkin ended up in the weekend curry along with a couple of softening tomatoes. I certainly didn’t discard almost 2.8kg of produce or leftovers for each of us, and this was a fairly typical week, so someone else must be throwing out the rest of my share.

In other parts of the kitchen, however, it’s time to do the seasonal purge of the cereal no one has touched since winter began and to go through the freezer and check for meat that never made it to the barbecue last summer.

While we don’t often have genuine “leftovers” unless someone has failed to arrive for a meal, there are occasions when I purposely cook too much so there will be something left over. I lovely recycling boiled potatoes next day by breaking them up, browning them in a frying pan and topping them with an egg. Also, I often buy a large enough lamb roast so I can make a shepherd’s pie the next day.

I don’t think I’ve ever really squandered food. However, I am also much more cautious about even slightly dodgy food and if I’m the least bit worried that something is past its best, out it goes. No regrets and no apologies. I don’t want a minute on the lips to end up as a night in the bathroom.

I think it's a good idea to focus on food wastage. Maybe Notebook should invite Gordon Ramsay to front the campaign...

Omnivore's Hundred

2008-08-30T13:31:00.007+10:00

Now here’s a bit of fun for those of you who are game to give most food a try. Andrew, a sometime journalist and full-time eater who lives in South London and blogs at Very Good Taste has come up with the Omnivore's Hundred - 100 things he thinks every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. It’s a mix of fine food, weird food, “different” food and some downright nasty food.

He’s called on his fellow bloggers to engage in a little interactivity and to:

Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

I’ve tried 65% of his list. Some things I haven’t tried because they’ve never been on offer. There are only a few things I wouldn’t eat, either because I don’t have an asbestos mouth, or they sound disgusting or might poison me. Wimpy, I know.

Let me know how you go… If you haven’t heard of some items, check them out on Wikipedia or Google.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
~~26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper~~
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
~~43. Phaal~~
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
~~46. Fugu~~
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
~~49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut~~
50. Sea urchin

Crocodiles are quick, dangerous and delicious

51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
~~59. Poutine~~
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
~~70. Chitterlings, or andouillette~~
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
~~75. Roadkill~~
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

They want to gag us!

2008-08-29T14:32:00.008+10:00

For what I am about to receive...

I see Heidi Pollock of San Francisco has set up the International Foundation for the Abolition of Food Blogging on Facebook . She says, “I don’t care what you ate. Seriously.”

I watch people walking past my house and I am not the least bit interested in what they’ve been eating, either. I see students get on a tram and I don’t give the slightest thought as to what they might have had for breakfast. That businessman in the black suit and the AFL club tie – am I curious about what he is planning for lunch? Not at all (though he appears to love his food).

When I see a thin person pushing a trolley through the supermarket, I sometimes glance inside to see if they eat at all. And I feel sorry for kids whose mothers stuff their trolleys with fat-laden ready-made meals and sail past the fruit and vegetables. But on the whole I don’t give the proverbial toss what my fellow citizens are eating… until...

Until I get on the net. Then I need to know what Deep Dish Dreams have appeared in the past week, what delights have been prepared at Stonesoup, what’s going on Under the Tamarind Trees, what is being hoovered up at Tastespotting, what poppyseed/herb/spinach/corn/chard/coconut/citrus-flecked whatevers are testing California’s alimentary canals, what sun-kissed ingredients are tempting Spanish tastebuds. I want it all, and I want it now. I want to perve the pix, work up an appetite, draw up a shopping list, cook up a storm.

Recently I had cause to run a rescue mission on one of my computers because I had managed to accidentally trash a few family photos. The recovery software trawled through the hard drive, retrieving jpeg files. As I flicked through them, one at a time, I had a sense of my life flashing before me. More specifically, my recent life on the internet. Every pic from every page I’d viewed in recent times had been cached. My predilection for food porn staggered even me.

I’m not yet ready to go cold turk…mmmm! A cold turkey sandwich, with stuffing and a grind of salt and pepper. Oops, I digress.

I am as guilty as the rest in feeding other people’s addictions. My website and blog stats show plenty of people come looking for food. Recent search terms have included kohlrabi, pizza wheels, rabbit stew, roast lamb, borlotti beans, pastourma, merguez, luderick, pikelets, persimmons, oxtail stew, mussels, polenta cake, prawn ravioli, beef cheeks, Puy lentils… they’re a hungry lot out there.

Some aren’t sure what they are after. Googling “It’s a highly seasoned sausage that is bright red” helped one visitor land on a page where I discussed New Zealand’s nasty “hot dogs” – battered saveloys on a stick.

There was a recent rush of people looking for the term that describes “cooking in oiled greaseproof paper or foil”. Must have been a foodie IQ test going on somewhere in Netland. Alas, cooking en papillote is not on my site.

Food is the new scarlet. You only have to look at the lineup of food programmes on TV to see how obsessed we’ve all become. And if food blogs and cooking shows educate us as well as entertain us – is that a bad thing?

Now for those strawberries...

Read while waiting

2008-08-22T16:46:00.004+10:00

I am sitting in my study, tweaking my website, catching up on my email, trying to keep my cat off the printer where she likes to sit and watch the traffic in the street outside.

There’s a young woman waking past, holding a book out in front of her, totally engrossed in what she is reading. Fortunately some of the uneven pavers have been replaced in recent months or she might have taken a spill. She appears oblivious to what’s going on around her.

It must be a riveting book. Perhaps she is limbering up for tomorrow - Saturday, August 23, is Read While Waiting Day.

The idea is that wherever you happen to be in the world, at 3pm you head into a public space, alone or with friends, and read for 15 minutes.

The project originated in Kuala Lumpur. The objective is to see more people reading any form of literature whenever they wait, and to make them more conscious that if they’re going out somewhere and know that some waiting will be involved, then take something to read.

Down Under venues for planned gatherings include:

Sydney: Wharf 2 & 3. Circular Quay.
Melbourne: Bourke Street Mall Tram Station.
Perth: In front of David Jones, Murray Street Mall.
Wellington: Civic Square. Outside Civic Art Gallery
Auckland: Aotea Square, Queen Street
Christchurch: Cathedral Square

If you're heading out tomorrow, take a book with you. A paperback Elizabeth David book is a good size...

If you're curious and want to hear more, check out this YouTube item.

Dodgy kitchen practices

2008-08-18T15:53:00.005+10:00

Last week I reported Kiwis are reluctant cooks when it comes to eggs. Now it has been revealed that a significant number of my fellow countrymen are also a bit slack when it comes to kitchen hygiene, while others blatantly shirk their dishwashing responsibilities.

According to a survey of more than 1200 New Zealanders, conducted by 3M New Zealand, 82 percent confessed they would leave a pot to soak to avoid washing it when it was their turn to do the dishes. And 47 percent admitted having thrown out a pot because it was too difficult to clean

I have no argument about leaving something to soak because the action of hot water and detergent generally softens things enough to make cleaning easier a couple of hours later - hours, not days!.

But more revelations from the survey – 27 percent of respondents said they used their kitchen cloths to clean their sports shoes, 22 percent said they washed their pet bowls with the kitchen cloth they used for their own dishes and 39 percent admitted to wiping up a spill on the kitchen floor with their kitchen sponge, then used it to clean dishes. However, 52 percent said they would not accept a second invitation to dine at a friend’s house if they saw the friend doing the same.

Sponges and pot scourers are a great breeding ground for bacteria because they provide the moist conditions the bugs need to grow. Curiously, 17 percent of the 1274 people surveyed actually believed the colour of the sponge made a different to hygiene with 9 percent believing yellow was the most hygienic colour for a sponge. However, all sponges are created equal and no matter what the colour they are, resident bacteria numbers can reach hundreds of millions if the sponges are not washed and sanitised.

But dodgy kitchen practices aren’t the exclusive domain of the home cook. So-called celebrity chefs are not innocent either.

Dr Layla Jader, of the National Public Health Service for Wales, raised the issue at the recent British Medical Association conference in Edinburgh saying TV chefs were setting a bad example by failing to follow basic hygiene standards.

Citing shows such as the BBC's Ready Steady Cook and Celebrity Master Chef, she said they often did not wash vegetables before using them or separate uncooked meat from other food, raising the risk of food poisoning.

“These are being watched by impressionable people - they should be setting a good example,” she said.

We've all see chefs mopping little spills off a plated dish with a cloth - was it a clean one? And how many of them do we see, leaning closely over a plate arranging the food with their bare hands? Or putting their sauce tasting spoon back on the bench.

If your own kitchen hygiene audit reveals some shortfalls, here are a few tips.

Quick fix for kitchen bacteria - a minute in the microwave or a cycle in the dishwasher

Nuke your sponges in the microwave or put them through a regular dishwasher cycle wth the dishes. Microbiologists at the Agricultural Research Service Food Technology and Safety Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland tested various sponge cleaning methods using very dirty sponges. They treated each sponge in one of five ways: soaked for three minutes in a 10 percent chlorine bleach solution, soaked in lemon juice or deionized water for one minute, heated in a microwave for one minute, placed in a dishwasher operating with a drying cycle—or left untreated.

The scientists chose these methods because they're commonly used in most household kitchens. They found that between 37 and 87 percent of bacteria were killed on sponges soaked in the 10 percent bleach solution, lemon juice or deionized water—and those left untreated. That still left enough bacteria to potentially cause disease.

Microwaving sponges killed 99.99999 percent of bacteria present on them, while dishwashing killed 99.9998 percent of bacteria.

As for yeasts and moulds, the sponges treated in the microwave oven or dishwasher were found to harbour less than 1 percent (0.00001 percent). Between 6.7 and 63 percent of yeasts and moulds survived on sponges soaked in bleach, lemon juice, deionized water or left untreated.

Always thoroughly wash hands before embarking on food preparation. Wash again at frequent intervals to prevent any cross contamination. This is particularly important after handling raw meat, particularly poultry. Use a clean hand towel or paper towel to dry hands.

Use separate chopping boards for preparing meat and vegetables. All fruit and vegetables should be washed prior to preparation. Raw meat and cooked meat should be kept separate. Wash knives thoroughly between chopping activities.

Cooked foods destined for later consumption, or leftovers, should be cooled as quickly as possible and then refrigerated. The mantra for safe food-handling is clean, cook, cover, chill.

Chicken about eggs

2008-08-13T14:46:00.009+10:00

A recent poll in New Zealand has revealed one in every dozen Kiwis is not confident about boiling an egg. Indeed some had never even tried. Nearly 1000 people were asked about their confidence level when it came to boiling, scrambling and poaching eggs. One in 10 people under 30 had never tried to poach an egg or make an omelet, and 15 per cent had never scrambled an egg.

So what is so intimidating about cooking cackleberries? I can think of several possible reasons.

A few years back, eggs got a bad press. There used to be an advertising campaign in New Zealand – “When there’s an egg in the house, there’s a meal in the house.” Then cholesterol reared its ugly head and we were urged to cut our egg consumption drastically. The little “googie egg” that seemed to be an ideal meal for a toddler was suddenly a no-no and a sure sign of poor parenting.

Fortunately eggs, consumed in moderation, have been restored to respectability. But it could be that a whole generation missed out on the nursery delights of a boiled egg with toast soldiers.

It was cornerstone of many a breakfast when I was growing up and it was one of the first things we learned to cook for ourselves. Timing was the main obstacle. Most kids like a boiled egg where the white is coagulated but the yolk is still runny. Who likes a runny white that looks like a runny nose? Or a yolk that is overdone? A minute out in either direction and comforting becomes disgusting.

Poached eggs were the sensible alternative but fishing the egg out of the water so it remained whole and didn’t shed water all over the hot buttered toast required a certain amount of skill. Enter the egg poacher. Our one had four removable aluminium cups nestling in holes in a rack above the boiling water. A knob of butter was placed in each cup and the egg gently tipped in once the butter had melted. It was easy to see when the egg was ready, though maybe not quite to easy removing the hot cup from the poacher.

Today there are far more sophisticated poaching tools made with non-stick surfaces. Non-stick pans are also a help, though using a non-stick fish slice to remove the egg from the pan can be overdoing tractionless cooking. Eggs can also be poached in cling-film (right).

There are good and bad scrambled eggs and a fine line between soft creamy eggs and dry watery ones. Too much heat and too much stirring are the main enemies.

My preference is to use a non-stick pan, medium low heat and a wooden spatula with a broad straight end for pushing the egg mix around the pan. It’s quick and easy.

While microwave ovens and eggs don’t generally go together, they work OK for scrambled eggs and are a good choice for weekend brunch fry-ups as by using a medium power setting and watching and whisking the egg/butter/milk mix every 30 seconds or so, it’s possible to then delay the finishing off burst and produce perfect creamy eggs once the bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes are dished up. For those struggling with timing issues, nothing beats an all in one egg dish baked in the oven.

Omelets take a little practice but aren’t unduly difficult though I’ve always had a pan specifically for omelets and crepes. An omelet topped with a few tomato slices and a sprinkling of cheese and herbs before turning out is the next best thing to instant food and should be high on a flatter’s “signature” dishes.

In spite of many Kiwis’ apparent nervousness about cooking eggs, they are still doing their bit for egg consumption, eating 218 eggs each per year, according to figures from New Zealand’s Egg Producers Federation.

Weblinks:

How to cook eggs

On my Cooking Down Under website:

From top:
Boiled egg
All-in-one baked egg dish
Egg poached in cling-film
Creamy scrambled eggs
300 minute eggs

Pictures © Pat Churchill

Kitchen reflections

2008-08-11T14:52:00.009+10:00

When you’re 155cm (61 inches) tall and the kitchen ceiling is at least another metre higher, you usually have a problem, particularly when you realise the chances of a kitchen being designed by a 155cm person are pretty remote.

Unfortunately most of the kitchens I have ever worked in have been designed by men – men who probably never cooked a thing in their lives.

My most frequently used piece of kitchen equipment for years was the step ladder. When we bought our house just after we were married, a stepladder was my only means of reaching half the cupboards in our kitchen, which had a 2.75 metre stud. I remember one day when I was nine months’ pregnant, standing on top of my stepladder, scratching round in a high cupboard, and suddenly thinking “How dumb is this?”

Fortunately I married a fairly tall man who can reach most hidden recesses in standard kitchen cabinetry. But why do architects persist with other stupid design hurdles?

This kitchen has a typical design fault - when the dishwasher door drops down, access
to the cupboards on the right is blocked off.

The kitchen I am working in now is a typical example. It has an arragement much like the one pictured above. When the dishwasher door drops down, it blocks access to the cupboards where the most frequently used kitchen crockery is stored, so dishes have to first be stacked on the bench then put away once the machine door is closed. I can’t put these dishes in a more accessible cupboard because those are all high and it’s difficult to lift several heavy dinner plates into or out of a shelf at face level or higher.

Many kitchens also have that useless upper cupboard at the end of one leg of an L-shaped bench. I can barely reach across the bench to the first shelf, let alone any of the higher ones.

Benches are always just that much too high for me. They makes operations like chopping and kneading difficult. Leaning across a sink to peel vegetables can be a strain on the back. So can pressing down when rolling pastry. It’s hard to apply downwards pressure with your elbows bent. The old kitchen table used to be an ideal height. Today’s benchtop working space is not. A physiotherapist once advised me to open the cupboard under my work surface and rest one foot on the bottom shelf. That is quite helpful in easing back strain.

You'd need to be fairly tall to access the upper shelves on the cupboard top right.

While wooden floors may look great in living areas, they are not very sensible in kitchens, particularly when there’s a dishwasher installed. And lighting needs to be over work surfaces, not behind the cook, casting shadows.

When we put a new kitchen in our home in New Zealand, I worked very closely with our architect’s newest recruit, a young man who had just qualified. This was his first kitchen and he was an absolute treasure to work with. He wasn’t very tall so he was already on my side. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the way I worked, what things I needed nearby for various tasks, how to allocate under-bench space, where to store larger kitchen appliances like food processors, blenders, breadmakers, where to site power outlets. I ended up with what was, for me, the perfect kitchen.

Ten years on, I don’t think I would be tempted to change anything. I rarely needed the stepladder because most things were within my limited reach. Those few top shelves were saved for stashes of pickles, jams and preserves.

Most times, however, particularly when renting, we just have to make do with what we’re presented with. And one person’s dream kitchen can be another’s nightmare. I remember the designer kitchen in one house we holidayed in. It was the beginning of the stainless steel era and everything was gleaming silver – right down to the skirting boards. Every time you washed the floor you had to stoop down and repolish the bottom of the walls. I don’t believe in creating work for oneself.

One thing that has puzzled me since shifting to Australia – I’ve yet to come across a kitchen fitted with an in-sink food waste grinder. They are brilliant for getting rid of chicken bones, vegetable peelings and all manner of food scraps - pretty much everything apart from corncobs and large bones. I thought maybe they’d been banned as water conservation became an issue. But anyone I’ve asked doesn’t seem to know why they’re not fitted.

Kitchens have come a long way in a century. Kitchen design wasn't an issue when there was only a wood-fired stove, a simple kitchen sink and a meat safe. There were no fancy kitchen appliances to be stored away. Rubbish was burned in the fire box or turned into compost.

There wasn't a cupboard full of cleaners for every different work surface and a kitchen gadget for every task from peeling prawns to hulling strawberries. Leftover washing soap was put in a soap shaker (right) which was vigourously shaken in a sink of hot water for doing the dishes. The soap suds didn't have the grease cutting power of today's detergents. A block of sandsoap was used to clean the scrubbed tabletops and wooden benches.

And greenhouse gases hadn't been thought of...

Feedback welcome.

Sadly missed

2008-08-02T12:06:00.004+10:00

My great-uncle Frederick Edward Jones (circled)

National Missing Persons week commences in Australia this Sunday. This year the focus is on young people as a significant group at risk of going missing. Of the estimated 35,000 people who are reported missing each year, approximately 20,000 are under the age of 18.

Having a member of the family go missing is devastating. My maternal grandmother’s brother disappeared around the time of World War 1 and the family never heard from him again. My grandmother spent years trying to discover where he was. She thought he had gone to Australia but though she tried the usual missing persons channels, her beloved brother Tim had simply vanished.

Decades later she would still talk sadly about his disappearance. It made a deep impression on me.

When I took up genealogy in the 1990s, I tried using various resources available in New Zealand to locate any trace of him. There appeared to be no record of his death there. I was unable to pick up a trail anywhere.

Last year I decided to start looking again – this time in Australia. Again, I could find no Timothy Jones who might be my great uncle. Jones has to be one of the most frustrating names to research!

One afternoon I was idly going through the World War 1 records of the First Australian Imperial Force on the National Archives of Australia website, tracing other family members. Suddenly I thought – did my grandmother’s brother join the Australian army? Other Kiwis did, including my paternal grandmother’s brother and uncle.

The query page requested just a surname. Unsurprisingly, Jones turned up more than 2300 results. However, instead of refining the search by putting in a given name, I decided to look through the lot, listing 200 on a page at a time. I noticed the records included POB – place of birth – so I searched for “Waitara”, a small town near New Plymouth, on each page. Gratification was swift. Just four pages later, I found a Frederick Edward Jones, born in Waitara, NZ, next-of-kin father William Jones. A score on both points.

Could Frederick Jones be Tim Jones? I downloaded his war record. Frederick (or Fred as he apparently called himself) had been a groom. My mother told me he “had worked with horses.” The next-of-kin details tallied. His father William Jones was listed as working at the Waitara freezing works, where indeed my great grandfather worked. I searched in the World War 1 census taken in New Zealand and discovered Frederick listed as a jockey working at Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch, and a member of the Second Reserves.

When I looked in my family tree at a list of my grandmother’s siblings, I suddenly realised that of seven children only the oldest two, Mary and Annie were known by their given names. William John was called Jack, Jerome Thomas was Paddy, Ethel Frances was known as Tup and my grandmother, Aileen Cletus was Molly. Not surprising that Frederick was commonly called Tim after one his mother’s brothers.

I flipped through the pages of my great uncle’s war record. He’d started with the 5th Light Horse Regiment then was later transferred to the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance. He was eventually discharged in Brisbane (where he’d enlisted) in 1919. It seems he stayed in Australia as his papers show that at least three times in the ensuing years he’d lost his discharge papers – in 1928, 1934 and 1940 – and had applied for replacements. In 1928, it seems, he had inadvertently burned them with rubbish when cleaning up camp after a job. The next time another fire had destroyed his papers. On July 2, 1940 they were in luggage that went missing when he was travelling by train in NSW. I doubt he knew, as he took that trip, that his father had died two days earlier.

I continued patiently sifting through the resources in the archives and was handsomely rewarded when I discovered a photo of Private Jones and his Field Ambulance comrades. I purchased the hi-resolution file and as I zoomed in on my new-found great uncle I could see his brothers and sisters looking back at me. I had a pang of disappointment that my grandmother was not still alive to share my find. The photo was an absolute bonus and my mother was so pleased at least part of the mystery had been solved.

I still need to pick up Fred Jones’s trail after 1940. He certainly won't still be alive today, but I am curious to know what happened to him. A Frederick Edward Jones is interred in a cemetery in Queensland. Is that him? Did he marry? Have children? Ninety plus years on, someone is still looking for him.

I hope those with missing family members don’t have to wait so long to find their loved ones. While the digitising of old records continues, making it easier for genealogists to put together the family jigsaw, regrettably today’s sophisticated electronic paper trail is often still not enough to trace today's missing people.

National Lamington Day July 25

2008-07-24T15:26:00.006+10:00

Lamingtons are a part of growing up Down Under. Indeed there was a time in my life when I was heartily sick of the sight of a lamington.

The sons were both First XI hockey players at college and as most parents know, membership of any sports team invariably involves fund-raising. The hockey boys cornered the lamington market at their school.

Mums, Dads, brothers, sisters – anyone who could be roped in to help, reported to the boarding school dining room on a nominated weekend and the lamington production line was set up.

A local baker provided great trays of sponge cake, cut into squares ready for transformation into lamingtons.

The kitchen team prepared the chocolate and the raspberry coatings and then it was action time as the dipping team plunged the squares in the mixtures then tossed each cake in desiccated coconut and put them aside to set.

The packaging team put the lamingtons in half-dozen lots on plastic trays that were then sealed in a plastic bag.

It was a long messy business but there was always plenty of fun and banter as we got into the swing of things. Fortunately the dining room was adjacent to the school gym, so when the smaller kids soon tired of “helping”, they licked their fingers and went off to play.

By the end of the afternoon we were all hanging out for a cuppa, and ready to groan at anyone who dared ask: “Who’d like a lamington with that?”

The lamingtons were pre-sold round the school and, because the cakes froze well, most school families had a cache of them in the home freezer. “Good for an emergency,” we used to laugh to each other as we bought a couple of dozen. Unfortunately, when the emergency was providing goodies for some school sport afternoon tea, woe betide the mother who thought she could get away with sending along a plate of lamingtons

July 25 is Australia’s third National Lamington Day, culmination of a fund raiser that has been running since July 11 where 20 cents from every pack of Top Taste Lamington sold goes to the children’s charity, Variety. The previous two Lamington Days have raised nearly $80,000 towards funding manual wheelchairs and key mobility projects for children across the country.

Variety has also called on corporate Australia to hold lamington days in the office to further the cause.

For anyone who wants to make their own lamingtons, here’s a recipe from one of my vintage cookbooks, the New Zealand Truth Cookbook. This book was published by Truth newspaper in the 1940s.

Lamingtons

Beat 1 cup sugar with 2 eggs to a cream; add 1 cup flour and 1 teaspoon baking powder. Pour in a greased roll tin and bake in a quick oven. Make a chocolate icing with 1 tablespoon cocoa dissolved in a little boiling water, and mix with 1/2lb icing sugar. When sponge is cold, cut into squares or oblongs, dip in icing and roll in desiccated coconut.

* * *

Here’s another from taste.com.au

Lamingtons

Melted butter, to grease
75g (1/2 cup) self-raising flour
75g (1/2 cup) plain flour
70g (1/2 cup) cornflour
6 eggs, at room temperature
215g (1 cup) caster sugar
1 tbs boiling water
170g (2 cups) desiccated coconut

Chocolate icing
300g (2 cups) icing sugar mixture
35g (1/3 cup) cocoa powder
60ml (1/4 cup) milk
60ml (1/4 cup) boiling water

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Brush a 19 x 29cm (base measurement) lamington pan with melted butter to lightly grease. Line the base and sides with non-stick baking paper, allowing it to overhang slightly.

2. Sift the combined flours together into a large bowl. Repeat twice.

3. Use an electric beater to whisk the eggs in a large clean, dry bowl until thick and pale. Gradually add the sugar, 1 tbs at a time, whisking well after each addition until mixture is thick and sugar dissolves.

4. Sift the combined flours over the egg mixture. Pour the boiling water down the side of the bowl. Use a large metal spoon to gently fold until just combined. Pour mixture into the prepared pan and use the back of a spoon to smooth the surface. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Turn cake onto a wire rack, cover with a clean tea towel and set aside overnight to cool.

5. Trim the edges of the cake and cut into 15 squares. Spread the coconut over a plate.

6. To make the chocolate icing, sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder into a medium bowl. Add the milk and water and stir until smooth.

7. Use 2 forks to dip 1 cake square into the warm icing to evenly coat. Allow any excess icing to drip off. Use your fingers to roll the cake in the coconut to evenly coat, then place on a wire rack. Repeat with the remaining cake squares, icing and coconut. Set aside for 1 hour or until icing sets.

Picture: taste.com.au

MoVida-ing On

2008-07-13T23:47:00.004+10:00

Something of a magic night here in Melbourne on Saturday as The Spouse and I attended the opening night of the stage show Wicked.

First thought – a knowledge of The Wizard of Oz is helpful, as this is a prequel.

Second thought – brilliantly staged, great lighting and sound and the most amazing sets. Fantastic voices, costumes. Totally professional.

Third thought – no songs I took away in my head (or “earworms”) which really surprised me, given my musical training and propensity to mop up tunes, sometimes against my will.

Fourth thought – maybe a tad long in the last act.

Reservations aside, it was a very polished show and the audience was totally enthusiastic, according a standing ovation.

Post-show highlight was looking for a meal. Our meandering took us past Hosier Lane. “Let’s check out MoVida,” I said. It was after 10pm and I expected we’d left our run too late. True. But they suggested we go “Next Door.” I’ve been waiting for MoVida to open their proposed new bar. In fact I thought they’d probably already done so. But the usual red tape had delayed that and in fact we were there for the fourth night of MoVida Next Door, a tapas and sherry bar spin-off from the main restaurant, this new one on the corner of Hosier Lane and Flinders Street.

Put me down for some more nights here. It’s open from 4pm to midnight and is aimed at those folk who want to call in and occupy the seats for about an hour, have a drink or two and enjoy some great tapas and raciones. The wine list isn’t extensive but it has a good mix and we opted for a Rioja white from Luis Canas and later our knowledgeable barman suggested a subtle Primitivo Quiles Moscatel to go with our dessert.

The food was that salty, savoury, deliciously flavoured fare we were hoping for – softly yielding croqueta, exquisitely crispy sardines, the night’s special of calamari, wispy strips of eggplant with a sweetly spiced sauce, then later a couple of orange-blossom flavoured sorbets served in orange shells.

Owner-chef Frank Camorra who was keeping a close eye on the evening’s work, is refining the menu nightly. This isn’t MoVida food moved next door – it’s a totally new experience, more geared towards char grilling and speedy cooking than MoVida’s slower cooked fare. We were drinking and grazing in double quick time and that's what it's all about after fasting since lunchtime.

Our neighbouring diners appeared to be chefs who had finished their shifts elsewhere and they were soon enthusing about their dishes including yabbies (which didn’t appear to be on the menu) and beef marrow with beef cheeks which smelled divine. They were also led through a couple of sherries by our host – an experience they were clearly savouring,

I noticed Frank cooking up a variety of dishes for staff towards end of service and all were indulging with gusto. And he was certainly having a good time himself.

MoVida Next Door is a welcome addition to Melbourne’s already vibrant grazing scene. They don’t take bookings but they’ll do their best to find you a place to squeeze in and enjoy.

Hallo-ha

2008-07-12T13:37:00.004+10:00

Don’t you hate picky eaters? And people who are morose around food and drink?

I’d been in the city shopping and before I headed out to catch my tram home, I visited the food hall at David Jones to perve the produce, have a quick snack and a glass of sauvignon blanc.

There I was with my tomato, basil and provolone panini and a sprinkling of salad and the de rigueur sav. My feet and I were feeling better by the minute.

A pretty young thing came and sat on a nearby stool. I’d seen her across the counter ordering her pizza. Along came an older man, I guessed her father, with a bottle of orange drink for her. His wine had been placed on the counter.

“Well,” she demanded. “Where’s the straw?” No thanks or anything. Yep, it had to be Dad. Dad waved down a cruising staff member and a straw was delivered.

Their food arrived. Dad’s salami pizza, her ham and pineapple. Well, I watched this young woman determinedly scrape every single piece of pineapple off her pizza. Not just a flick to the corner of the plate but a deliberate scrape, scrape, scrape. While Dad, salami pizza long since demolished, was chatting business on his cell phone – “I’m in Melbourne – it’s noisy here” - Miss Anti-Hawaiian was in major discard mode.

It kind of begs the question – if you don’t like pineapple, why order a pizza whose predominant topping is pineapple? On second thoughts, maybe she had a sudden revelation that Hawaiian pizza is indeed a gastronomic sin.

Freshly laundered octopus

2008-07-03T14:44:00.009+10:00

I came across a seriously worrying recipe today that called for placing several small octopus in a washing machine.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been unduly concerned about the personal hygiene of an octopus although I certainly remember some Korean squid fishermen who used to call in to a local journalists’ drinking hole in Wellington when they were in port. They used smell a bit high on a warm day. Some fish species do tend to leave a bit of residual pong on the skin. No use washing in hot water, which only opens the pores. But I digress.

The recipe comes from Gregory Zapantis, chef-owner of New York’s Kellari Taverna and Greek bistro Kellari’s Parea. It contains five small octopus, which Chef Zapantis tenderises by putting them through one cycle in the washing machine. I wonder, does he have a washing machine in his restaurants, specially for laundering octopus, or does he use the one at home? (“Hey Dad, did you find my missing sock?”) Do they go through on a hot cycle or flail around in tepid water? With or without fabric softener?

I have heard of cooking salmon in a dishwasher. Maybe Mr Zapantis calls his dishwasher a washing machine? Even so, opening the door of a dishwasher and finding five octopus with their dangly bits draped about the wire baskets just might take one’s appetite away.

Should you wish to try this at home and report back, here is the recipe, as given in a recent Kellari newsletter. It contains some fairly serious amounts of oil and vinegar so I assume these are restaurant quantities. And Mr Zapantis seems to have omitted the vital char-grilling step…

Charcoal Grilled Octopus with Red Wine Oregano Vinaigrette

Octopus:
5 Octopus 10-12 oz Each
10 Black peppercorns, crushed
5 Bay leaves
1 Liter Red Wine Vinegar

Procedure:
Tenderize octopus in washing machine by putting it through one cycle. 5 octopus can be done at one time in machine.

Marinade:
2 parts Red wine vinegar
1 part Red Wine
1/4 Cup Red Pepper Flakes
1 Cup Dried Oregano
1 Cup Olive Oil

Procedure:
Place all ingredients except oil in quart container and cover with oil.

Red Wine Oregano Vinaigrette:
2 ltr-Red wine vinegar
2 ltr-Red wine
25 Pcs-Bay Leaves
1 Cup-Black pepper
7 Pcs-Shallots rough chopped
10 Pcs-Cloves garlic, rough chopped
8 tbl-Honey

Procedure:
Place all ingredients in a medium stockpot bring to boil and reduce to 1⁄2. Remove from heat and all spices to steep into red wine vinegar reduction.

Oregano oil:
1 Gal Blended oil
3 Bu. Oregano, Fresh
2 c Oregano, Dried

Procedure:
Place all ingredients in medium pot and bring to a boil & simmer for 20 minutes remove from heat and all herbs to steep for 1 hour. Strain through chinois.

To finish vinaigrette:
Store oil & reduce separately. Pour equal parts of both to complete vinaigrette

For Shallots:
Shallots, thinly sliced
Chopped parsley,
Vinaigrette,
Dried oregano
Salt & black pepper.

Procedure: To order, toss 1/4C shallots with vinaigrette, parsley, dried oregano, seasoning.

For plate:
Place shallots on bottom of plate, center. Slice octopus into 1/4-inch pieces on a bias. Toss with vinaigrette & herbs (chives & parsley). Place on top of shallots.

Garnish:
Chopped Parsley, Chopped Chives, Vinaigrette, Dried oregano.

Weblinks:
http://kellari-parea.com
http://www.kellari.us

(Yes, at school I was taught the plural of octopus was octopodes, but let's not be nit-picking...)

Fruitful shopping trip

2008-06-28T19:34:00.007+10:00

When I was growing up in New Zealand, they were called tree tomatoes, botanical name Solanum betaceum. Along with feijoas, guavas and passionfruit, we rarely had to buy them because usually one of the neighbours would share the bounty from their garden.

At one house we had a tree tomato growing alongside our drive. It assumed great importance the year my grandmother bought me skates for my birthday. I’d lurch from fencepost to fencepost to tree tomato trunk in my bid to master my wheelie-feet.

I gradually got better at skating and the tree-hugging stopped.

Around 1967, the New Zealand Tree Tomato Promotions Council decided this egg-shaped fruit needed to have a more exotic name. The name tamarillo was chosen. The fruit previously known as the Chinese gooseberry was renamed Kiwifruit for the same reason. We got over it and became accustomed to calling both by their new names.

When my first son came along, I introduced him to tamarillos. An initial pursing of the lips so became an enthusiastic licking of the chops, as he acquired my addiction. I remember being desperately worried about finding a substitute when his first tamarillo season drew to a close.

When I shifted to Australia I rather disturbed by the cost of tamarillos. They were priced individually rather than by the kilo. But I willingly paid a dollar or more for a single one because I missed them so much.

It seems prices have soared back in New Zealand as they were $NZ9.95 a kilo when I visited recently.

Last weekend at my local market I bought a couple of tamarillos for $2 so when I saw them priced at 58 cents each at the supermarket a couple of days later, I grabbed a plastic bag and recklessly started filling it up, mentally noting this lot had been grown in Australia.

The young woman at the checkout had never seen them before.

“What are these?”

“Tamarillos.”

“How do you spell that?”

“T-A-M-A…” I began as she tried entering it on the till.

No results.

“Is it a fruit?”

She tried again, but the picture prompts on her screen did not feature tamarillos. I mentioned they were ticketed at 58 cents apiece, but she called up the roving troubleshooter and he went off to check things out in a back room somewhere.

I was about to offer my usual jesting comment when things don’t scan properly - “They must be free…” when Mr T came back and said “They’re not on the computer.”

Guess what?

“They’re not on the computer,” she said. “You can have them free.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I should have given her one to try. No, I should have sneaked back and grabbed another bag while they were such a bargain.

Who said there’s no such thing as a free lunch?

Thou winter wind!

2008-06-25T21:28:00.004+10:00

Man hugging power pole during high wind in Wellington, 1967

Here in Melbourne we've been advised to batten down the hatches overnight as wind gusts of up to 100 km/h are forecast.

I went for a stroll down to the local bayside shop around 5.30pm and the wind was definitely getting up. However, as a native of New Zealand’s windy Wellington, I took a certain nostalgic pleasure in my walk.

One thing we Wellingtonians are used to is “blowing the cobwebs off.” Many of us have our homes on the hills around the city and hills can be fairly windy places even on a relatively “calm” day.

One thing we didn’t miss when we shifted to Melbourne was the gusting wind that would come along and spoil an otherwise pleasant day. A steady breeze is tolerable. Strong wind gusts are not. Wellington averages 173 days a year with wind gusts greater than about 60 km/h and gales regularly produce gusts of more than 140 km/h. The strongest wind speeds have been recorded at Hawkins Hill, the highest peak in Wellington’s southern hills, home to a domed radar station. In 1959 and again in 1962, wind gusts there reached an incredible 248 km/h.

Pedestrian battling the wind during the November 1959 storm. Note he has removed his hat.

Umbrellas are a joke in Wellington. I’ve never owned one that could compete with a decent wind – the sort that results in horizontal rain. Toupes don't stay the distance, either.

I remember going to a big fashion awards night a couple of decades back. Many of the patrons and participants who had left home elegantly coiffed and swathed in glamorous gowns eventually flooded through the doors of the central city venue looking a very sorry sight indeed.

Feathers must have been the thing that year, but far from it being a case of water off a duck’s back, the perky little feathered hairpieces and tinted locks drooped down over glistening wet shoulders and waterlogged eveningwear. There were a lot of sweet young things crouching under the hand-dryers trying to repair the damage.

In Wellington you rarely plan a barbecue – it has to be a spontaneous thing if the day is warm and calm. Even then, things can change while you’re defrosting the meat you had to put away the previous week. It always pays to have Plan B.

Nurseries sell “wind-hardy” plants. It’s not unusual to find the annuals you planted in the border last week have migrated to the vegetable garden overnight.

But having lived most of our lives there, we got used to the wind and would only comment on it if it moved the car sideways on an exposed stretch of the motorway, a tree lost some limbs or the locals started holding on to lamp-posts while they waited at pedestrian crossings.

During the great Wahine Day storm in 1968, when the inter-island ferry Wahine sunk in the entrance to Wellington Harbour with the loss of 51 lives, I recall picking up my news editor to drive him in to work. I pushed the horn as I neared his house and Donald, who was a short Scotsman, came out and started crossing the road to my car. Talk about a Highland fling. He danced a few steps down the road, a few steps back. His arms were flying and so were his feet as he tried to keep his balance.

A decade or more later when our first son arrived I soon learned not to push his buggy into the wind on a very gusty day. Babies have a really hard time trying to catch their breath with a gale blowing up their little snub noses and exposed nostrils. Adults don't have this problem to the same extent.

October is Wellington’s windiest month and this continues through to January. When our kids were growing up, most Guy Fawkes night plans were postposed till the next calm period. Some years the fireworks were still sitting around till New Year’s Eve.

But then, as every born and bred Wellingtonian will tell you, on a good day the city is brilliant, though there are always the days when you ask where is the wind when you want it? I can remember yachting out on Wellington Harbour and being becalmed at dusk as we were trying to making it back to the moorings. Or getting the kids all hyped up about their new kites and striking it absolutely still at the nearby park.

Tonight even our Wellington cat is enjoying herself as she scurries around outside chasing the last of the vine leaves dancing around the yard. The wind is slapping the solar pool heating system about on the roof and she no doubt thinks the possums are back.

A good breeze, but hopefully not an ill wind…

Photos: The Dominion Post Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library.

Dishes to die for

2008-06-24T10:48:00.009+10:00

There’s a “last supper” feeling to a restaurant that’s opened in the Ukraine. It’s built in the shape of a coffin and features a number of death-related dishes, according to The Telegraph.

Diners sit among wreaths and regular-sized caskets and choose from such fare as 9-day and 40-day salads named after local mourning rituals. There’s also one dish called “Let’s meet in paradise”.

The restaurant, named Eternity, is the brainchild of a firm of undertakers who hope that they’ll attract some of the tourists who visit the region to bathe in the mineral-rich waters. They’re also hoping to claim a world record for the world’s largest coffin, an award so far unclaimed, according to Guinness World Records.

Maybe they will also drum up a little business if diners have to wait an Eternity for service, or choke on their victuals.

Weblink: http://www.kava.lviv.ua/articles/1471.html?page=1

Here I come, M Proust

2008-06-23T23:51:00.007+10:00

Some months back there was a fire at The Chef’s Hat in nearby South Melbourne, a great barn full of all the pots, pans, mixers, sieves, knives, tableware, kitchen gadgets and drawer fillers the home cook or professional chef could want.

I'm a regular customer, going in there to buy baking pans, glassware to replace the ones the errant dishwasher manages to break, thermometers to convince myself the old oven WAS malfunctioning, unusual dishes for a bit of food photography… It’s a great place to spend an hour or so looking at all the bits and bobs I don’t need and finding things I didn’t know I needed till I saw them.

On Saturday The Spouse and I visited South Melbourne market to stock up on cocoa, calasparra rice, lamb shanks, fresh fish for dinner, and winter vegetables. We were taking a rest and tucking into some tortilla slices at one of the food outlets when he noticed a fire sale was in full swing at The Chef’s Hat. “Want to try it?” he asked. Silly question.

I knew there was something I needed to buy there, though for the moment I couldn’t remember what that was. I thought if I started browsing, it might come to mind, so we ventured over.

There was quite a feeding frenzy taking place in the main open area as Melbourne’s well-heeled foodies, self-acclaimed cooks, trainee chefs, languid lovers, mothers-in-law, optimistic bargain hunters and amnesic food writers milled and thronged. The less inhibited dived headlong into fire-damaged cartons, scratching through the packages in search of gold. Flames and water can make rather a mess of merchandise and there were some sorry looking rusty pans that would have scrubbed up if one were keen enough.

The Spouse checked out the shelves of undamaged kitchenware in search of a new teapot to replace a well loved one that had sprung a leak. Meanwhile I remembered I was after madeleine tins. I’d been a bit overenthusiastic in giving away many of my baking pans and trays when I shifted countries and am currently on a replacement exercise, having got reacquainted with some of my cast-offs in Mum’s kitchen.

So, while I didn’t get any bargains, or indeed the sort of teapot we wanted, I am nevertheless set up for my next baking day when I propose to put Marcel Proust’s passion to the test and bake some madeleines. Watch this space.

Weblink: www.chefshat.com.au - yes, it does need that apostrophe, doesn't it...