After rain, re-vamp

I am hibernating. The trill of rain on my window and the trees thrashing about in wind are crushing my motivation. I slip beneath the doona at 2pm and would disappear until wine-o'clock if it wasn't for the weather-bashed school-run. I am not feeling 'Christmassy', I am not compiling lists of my 'favourite seasonal' things. I am barely cooking anything new - just rotating the basic pasta/chicken curry/pasta/mash-topped bake scenario. I am eating pastries instead of lunch, having another tea with honey. I listen to the radio all day for company and peer at other people's wonderful lives artfully displayed on their brilliant blogs. I have no more money to shop, only the kids will get presents this year. Australia is taunting me, from the pages of my book, The Slap, and I'm watching the TV series of it, barely able to breathe. I wake each morning in the dark. I am still in Manchester.

I have had some triumphs. I made a nice gratin with mixed root vegetables and served it with a radicchio and avocado salad and a side of caramelised fennel from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty.

I have danced in the kitchen to DJ Shadow's Scale it Back featuring Little Dragon and felt it to be the most perfect expression of my soul.

I have tweaked small areas of our house. The hallway now has a bamboo phone table and the shoe basket next to it, and this small vignette, this little zone of organisation makes me disproportionately happy.

But in all, it's been a sleepy, bleak week.

I will rise again, and so will this diary, to meet the new year with a fresh start, a refreshed outlook, and a new look. The good news is, I have the skills of a proper photographer on board - Darren Hickson will be joining me in this project, and as of January posts will go up twice monthly, with fabulous photography.

Until then, thank you for reading.

xx Nicole

Mixed Root Vegetable Gratin

3 medium potatoes, washed and cut as thin as you can (tip: cut a weeny little piece from the length-wise bottom of the potato off and then it will have a flat base to stay steady on the board as you slice)
1 small sweet potato, peeled and finely sliced in rounds
1 medium parsnip, peeled and finely sliced in rounds
approx 1 cup double cream
1 clove garlic, crushed
a pinch of grated nutmeg
sea salt and pepper
Parmesan or Grano Padano, grated to top

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius
Put the vegetables, garlic and nutmeg into a bowl and cover with the cream, toss and season well.
Layer the vegetables into a baking dish, pouring any extra cream from the bowl over the top, you want the mix to be coated well, but too much cream makes for a sloppy gratin.
Sprinkle with Parmesan and then cover with tin foil.
Bake in the hot oven for about 35 - 40 mins or until the vegetables are soft (press a sharp knife through them) and then remove the foil to brown the cheese for another 10 mins.


Yotam Ottolenghi's caremilised fennel
(the original recipe is finished with goat's curd, but I am not a fan)

4 small or 2 large fennel bulbs
40g unsalted butter
3 tabs olive oil
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp fennel seeds
grated zest of 1 lemon
sea salt and black pepper

Method:

Take off the fronds of the fennel and save some to garnish. Slice off the bottom root part of the bulbs and remove the tough outer layer, keeping the base in-tact. Cut each bulb lengthwise, into 1.5 cm slices.

Melt the butter and oil in a large frying pan on high heat, large enough to hold all the slices, or do 2 batches in a smaller pan. When butter starts to foam add the fennel. Turn only when the fennel has coloured a light brown, about 2 mins, then turn.

When other side is browned, remove the slices from the pan and add the sugar, fennel seeds, and salt and pepper. Fry for about 30 seconds, then return the fennel to the pan and cook for a further 2 mins to coat. Remove and allow to cool to room temperature.

To serve, arrange the fennel on a deep plate and toss with finely chopped dill fronds, the crushed garlic and lemon zest.

A whole fish

photo by Darren Hickson at Shoot The Moon

I am a Pisces, what sign are you? Groan, I hear you, I do. Astrology is not for the cynical of this world. It is considered a kind of faith but to those that can suspend disbelief for a short time, it can be observed just like any other science.

I don't read my daily forecast, but I do consult an astrological oracle book, The Astrological Oracle by Lyn Birkbeck, that is a tome of wisdom and uplifts, advises, supports my growing world view, takes me deeper always pushing me to see the events of my life, the questions in my mind, from a bigger perspective: in the context of psychology, history, the ever changing.

It's funny how some people say they are vegetarian but eat fish. Like fish is not an animal but something else - a bit like being a Pisces actually. We are human, but we are something else! Considered the sum total of the human journey, Pisces long to dissolve self-ness into the one-ness that most will, or sense they will, experience at some stage. Like the brief flash of a silver tail sparking out from the ocean, this longing propels us to seek a kind of light, all be it fleeting. We usually act out this longing for wholeness through music, poetry, drugs and alcohol or, if lucky, through meditation and a natural zen-like harmony with the inherent nature of things.

I have tried them all.

There is an art to living that finds flourish in food. Pounding herbs with stone or stirring onions in oil, thinking about what you eat, understanding it's medicine, loving those you feed, buying food with care, touching it, sniffing, pressing the top of an avocado to check its yield, sifting flour from a great height and watching the dust settle in a perfect peak, growing, watering, washing dirt from a turnip, the scent of lime zest oil on your fingers, music in the kitchen, the abstract splash of spaghetti sauce on a baby's bib. This is the stuff that keeps us grounded, and yet expresses the highest aspects of ourselves.

Nothing says abundance, communion, and bounty like a whole fish.

Here's some rubs you may want to try, just get the fish monger to clean and gut your fish. Before cooking wash it with cold water, cleaning any blood that may be left in the cavity (this can make the fish taste bitter) and pat dry, then make 2 to 3 deep slashes across the body with the blade of your knife facing the head. Have your barbeque, or griddle pan on the gas, at a medium to hot heat level so that the skin chars nicely but doesn't burnt the minute you put the fish on. As a general rule, whole fish take 15 to 20 minutes per kilo to cook, starting on one side of the fish, then turning half-way through.

Oregano Pesto
(This paste is great tossed through pasta with some slow-roasted cherry tomatoes and Parmesan or smeared on bread with avocado and toasted pumpkin seeds - have a play)


A handful of fresh oregano leaves picked
Small bunch of parsley, washed and roughly chopped including stems
1 large or 2 small cloves of garlic peeled
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt

Method:

Put the oregano leaves, parsley and garlic in a mortar, starting with half the amount if your mortar is small and adding more as the leaves reduce and pound together with a splash of the oil. Gradually add more of the oil as the mixture forms a paste, as fine or chunky as you wish. Season to taste. Rub into your fish, reserving some of the mix for pouring over when cooked. Serve with a nice salad.

Coriander, Chilli, Kaffir Lime and Ginger
(see photo)

Small bunch of coriander, washed and roughly chopped
1 red large red chilli, roughly chopped (keep the seeds in if you want it hot)
1 large kaffir lime leaf thinly sliced
1 lime, juice and zest (the little organic limes I buy have yellow skin)
Thumb sized piece of ginger, chopped
1/3 cup olive oil
Sea salt

Method:

Make the paste using the coriander, chilli, kaffir lime, lime juice and zest, ginger and oil, pounding with your pestle in a mortar until the flavours have infused. Season to taste. Reserve some the marinade to pour over fish when cooked. Cook as above and garnish with extra limes and zest, chopped chives and some more of the marinade. Steamed rice and a Thai-style coleslaw (julienne carrots, finely slice red cabbage, white cabbage another couple of kaffir lime leaves and red onion and dress with lime juice, rice vinegar, a little oil, a dash of fish sauce and honey) would make a feast of it. 

Greek Gods, hot Christmases and best friends forever

photo by Elaine Dunstan

Christmas in Australia is hot. Santa dads sweat beneath the scratchy nylon suits but often need no fake stuffing help with the jolly beer belly.

My best friend Belinda's father is Greek. I remember his straight nose, running almost parallel to his face. It gave his profile the kind of mythical grace seen in marble statues of the Gods. He held himself like a mythical God too, casting his cynical appraisal of our human foibles: my died red hair that "looks like you've dipped your head in beetroot", driving me and Belinda to a nightclub, his eyebrow arched, that stern nose flaring it's nostrils as we infused his car with the smell of our cigarette and champagne breath.

As a teenager I was always a little scared of Tony, his uncensored wit. He came in and out of their lives in a mysterious manner - here for a week then gone. Belinda's German/Australian mother Jan ran the house with an unceasing energy. It was a mock-Spanish double story house, flamboyantly and wonderfully kitted-out with Jan's garage-sale finds set amongst a wild tropical garden of palms and creepers and unnerving spider webs. Jan fanatically cleaned the swimming pool of fallen leaves each day and if I turned up when she was gardening with her hair in rollers she would always say "oh God, don't look at me!" and would emerge later with a perfectly coiffed blonde bob and beautifully made-up eyes.

Jan loved cigarettes and stout and having people around. She loved me like a daughter, always ready to praise and acknowledge my attempts at finding myself - despite all the foibles she witnessed in me along the way from when we first met at 12 until her death just a few years back.

I loved going to Belinda's house, and Christmas was always celebrated together at some stage of the day. Jan would have the music up loud by the time I arrived, and a glass would be thrust in my hand. Dogs would be yapping, Jan's best friend Pat would be at the kitchen her red lipstick on, a cigarette fuming in the ashtray, helping in a calm and constant manner giving Jan the space to be the exaggerated personality: dancing to Tina Turner, cooking up a storm, putting roast garlic into mashed potatoes, barking at Tony to check the roasted pumpkin.

I always felt the Greek influence in Belinda's house even when Tony was gone. They ate feta salads for lunch when everyone else was having ham sandwiches. That garlicky mashed potato! They had a way with food that was somehow foreign - they picked at things, little plates of this or that, nuts or olives or even just a clementine, but there was a sense of occasion to it, something was different in their approach to eating that I admired.

Belinda and I were best friends from 12 to about 21, something wild, intensely curious and slightly damaged in both of us, drawing us into connection, a friendship that still feels today, after nearly 20 years of separation due to location, like a sisterhood.

One Christmas it was so hot I remember feeling the unbearable furnace of my car's steering wheel as I drove this time to Pat's house for the big lunch. Pat made tzatziki and salads and Tony had bought a whole lamb that he was roasting on a spit, brushing it with rosemary branches dipped in olive oil, a Christmas cracker-hat sitting wonky on his rippled hair. I was vegetarian at the time, but i got drunk and Tony cajoled me into eating his lamb, mocking deep Greek offence at my initial refusal of the meat. It was the best lamb I've ever had.

My beautiful friend Belinda is a mother now, living in Brisbane, so far away from me our Christmases never collide. I miss you my Belle, thank you for making me a part of your family, and a little bit Greek.

Here is recipe for the Greek classic Spanakopitta, something I ate every day straight out of the paper-bag from a take-away bakery in Rethmynon on our recent holiday to Crete.

Spanakopitta (adapted from Claudia Roden: A new book of Middle Eastern Food)

(serve with salads of cucumber, red onion, tomato, olives and dried oregano and shredded lettuce and white onion both dressed with extra-virgin Greek olive oil and lemon juice)

1 kg fresh spinach

120g butter

120g crumbled feta (or a mix of feta, ricotta and grated Parmesan)

a pinch of grated nutmeg (optional)

a small bunch of parsley or 1 tablespoon chopped marjoram (optional)

salt and pepper

8 to 10 sheets of filo pastry

Method:

Carefully wash the spinach (if using the hardier silver beet cut off any hard stems). Drain and chop then cook gently in a large fry pan in 2 tablespoons of butter and season. Cook until just tender and when cool enough to handle, squeeze out the excess juice.

Add the spinach to the cheese, mixing well, and season again adding the nutmeg. You can now add the chopped parsley or marjoram to the mix.

Butter a large, deep baking dish of any shape. Fit four or five sheets of filo in it, brushing each sheet with melted butter and folding them up so that they overlap the sides of the dish.

Spread the spinach and cheese mix over this base layer and cover with the remaining sheets of filo, brushing melted butter between each layer and on the top.

Bake in a moderate oven 160 degrees Celsius for about 45 mins then increase the heat for the last 5 to 10 minutes to 220 degrees Celsius or until the top is golden and crisp and the base is cooked through rather than soggy.

Deli goods

I don't know what I would do without the Barbakan Deli in Chorlton, Manchester. It's not trendy, but all the hip people go. It makes and sells great food but is not on an ego trip. Sometimes I do wish it had the polished concrete floors and industrial reclaimed benches, the fashionable magazines for browsing on the communal table kind of vibe that makes you think about what you're wearing before you go, makes you watch and be seen, fret that your turn-ups are the wrong height on your wrong-coloured jeans. If this place was in Sydney or Melbourne, or North London for that matter, it would be like this. But it's not. It's in South Manchester, and if there is one thing northerners scorn, it's pretension. So, I humble my inner fashionista and adore the Barbakan for being exactly what it is: a fabulous continental deli, complete with beige/lemon and burgundy uniforms for the staff, no music, a crammed and heady interior of heaving shelves of panatone, aborio, saffron and Polish noodle soup sachets, with a number system for queueing and a freezing outdoor patio of wobbly aluminium tables for dining (but I will never forgive the polystyrene cups for the coffee!).

 It would be a gargantuan job just to open this place each day. There is hundreds of cheeses to portion and display, every kind of continental meat to slice and pack, fresh salads like potato and dill, Russian salad, falafel and parsley to make, caramelised onion and goat cheese quiches to bake, take-home packs of (ridiculously cheap) Greek mezze and antipasto to assemble, and that's not including the bread. The Barbakan makes the best bread in Manchester - from perfect bagels to the lightest, best-toasting German rye and huge flat rectangles of herbed foccacia. On the weekends they set up a barbeque on the patio and cook French and Polish sausages, onions and sauteed potatoes. Needless to say, the place is always rammed. Victor, a Sanskrit scholar and the Barbakan manager, has the measured grace of the theosophical thinker. Victor is never huffy or ruffled, he manages to wax lyrical about Tibetan Buddhist literature, ask about the Aboriginal predicament, listen with calm and total attention as I natter about my work and life, suggest salami or a recipe for baked cheese with thyme and sweet wine (see pics) and play silly games with my son. And if he ever stops stocking my Italian tuna, well, I just don't want to think about that.

These next few shots are ones I did with the talented Darren Hickson from Shoot The Moon for my food styling portfolio. The breads, baked cheese, pasta and deli goods come from The Barbakan.

Orecchietti with sprouting broccoli, anchovy and chilli

(serves four and takes seconds!)

400g orechiette pasta

1 bunch of sprouting broccoli (or 1 medium head of normal if unavailable)

2 cloves garlic sliced

6 anchovy fillets

2-3 tablespoons e-v olive oil

1-2 teaspoons dried chilli flakes (or 1 fresh red chilli finely chopped)

a knob of butter

freshly grated Parmesan

Method:

Place a large pot of cold salted water on to boil. When rapidly boiling, add the orecchieti and stir to avoid clumping together.

While the pasta is cooking, trim the ends from the broccoli stalks and chop into 2cm pieces, including the dark green leaves, leaving the small florets whole (if using normal broccoli, cut the florets from the base of their stem into smaller portions and reserve, cooking them in with the pasta at the last 2 minutes).

Heat the oil in a heavy based frying pan on medium. Add the anchovy fillets and mash with the back of a wooden spoon until they start to dissolve. Add the broccoli, garlic and chilli. Turn up the heat and stir, cooking for a few minutes or until the stalks have become tender, being careful not to burn the garlic. 

When the pasta is done, drain and reserve a splash of the cooking water. Add the orrecchiete to the broccoli with a little butter and a small handful of Parmesan. With the heat on low stir to coat the pasta thoroughly - add a tablespoon or so of the water if it is too dry - and season to taste. Serve with extra Parmesan. 

Bananas are too precious to waste

A bowl of brown mottled skin and heavily fragrant bananas sat next to the digital radio all last week. It's quite strange to have spent bananas in this house. We eat a bunch every two days. My top-up shopping list is always: milk, bananas, biscuits. But here they were: four bananas getting funky and I couldn't bring myself to throw them away, especially after Australia. Our last visit home came at the tail end of a series of natural disasters: flooding, cyclones, fires, and that, paired with an obnoxious economy sticking its finger up at the rest of the world, made the price of bananas comparable to caviar. ONE kilo of bananas was $13 - which would equate to about $39 per week just for bananas in our house. I might spend that on wine, but bananas?

It's a strange paradox, this life I now live. One the one hand, I come from a country of great wealth and beauty. A life of privilege; a childhood pottering in rockpools, teenage years diving into waterholes, early twenties sunbaking on Bondi Beach, zooming on the back of a motorbike past endless fields of sugarcane, not even knowing that the great high I was riding was that of freedom, innocence and trust. I remember a wet season in Cairns, tadpoles turning into frogs and jumping across my barefeet. I lived simply and with no concern for money. I experienced the events in my life mythically, attuned to synchronicity, without compromise. It doesn't mean I was always happy.

And here I am, in England, in post-industrial Manchester. My children potter in rain puddles, not rockpools, and yet I have never felt so abundant. Things are coming together. I live with many compromises, many demands and few excursions into freedom. But there is something to be gained from restrictions. Like I am learning the craft of living by necessary restraints - a kind of Haiku for the life. Yes, I mourn for my country, for my children's lost childhood of river banks crowned by gum trees and holidays in caravan parks near coastal towns where every day is meandered between the beach and milkshop for golden gaytime icecreams. The flip flop of thongs soundtracking their steps, squirming beneath my zinc covered fingers as I protect their freckling skin. Oh god, don't get me started. I mourn for my country.

But their is an acute heightening of the senses that occurs when you are exiled. And exiled I am - there is no job for my husband in Australia and as things are at the moment, we couldn't afford to buy a house there. I have surrendered: I have to find beauty here or go mad.

Right now, listening to Radio 6, Inner City Life by Goldie plays and the haunting, urban drum and bass and harrowed gospel of the vocals is tearing at my soul - it works because I am in a city, an old and dirty city; a city that has it's triumphs and losses, it's loves and tragic stories. I have the lights on because it's so dark during the day now, the sky outside is bleached grey. I hear sirens and aeroplanes overhead. Winter is coming. Beneath my feet in parks is the vast tapestry of autumn leaves, looking up, the branches they have left behind form a filigree of black lace in the sky. I bought foot warmers for my shoes for £1.99 and today, on the school run, I trialed them out. It was like walking around with a mini heater in my shoe. I think I will make it through this winter. I really do.

This cake tastes great with a coffee and a good tune to listen to.

Banana loaf cake with brown sugar and walnut topping

(adapted from Stephanie Alexander's the cook's companion)

125g softened unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed (very) ripe banana
few drops pure vanilla
250g self-raising flour
1/2 cup buttermilk or 1/2 cup milk with a few drops of lemon juice added

For the topping combine:

3 tablespoons self-raising flour
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped walnuts
100g softened unsalted butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Butter and flour your cake tin (I used a long skinny loaf tin but a 20cm square cake tin is recommended in the original recipe) and line the base with baking paper.
Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy (it takes a while, be patient).
Beat in the eggs, banana and vanilla.
Sift the flour and add to mixture, alternating with buttermilk.
Spoon into cake tin and top with walnut mix.
Bake for about 45 mins - check to ensure the walnutty top is not burning about half-way through cooking and cover with foil if it's getting too brown - burnt walnuts taste foul.
Cool the cake for a few minutes before turning out.

Cardamom on my tongue

Cardamom is one of my favourite flavours and it pops up in unexpected places. Cardamom ice cream like they make in India is a revelation. I was recently swooning with delight on the windswept street of Curry Mile in Rusholme, as I sucked a long thin cardamom and pistachio ice cream, a kulfi, bought from an old robed man with a stall that I've never seen again. Cardamom spiced tea is sublime. In my hippy days at the Confest festivals, the chai tent was the place to chill on an embroidered cushion with a pottery mug of honeyed spiced tea and a bearded friend to chat with. I brewed cardamom with lots of white sugar in strong black coffee for my ecclectic friends in the share-house on Ruskin Street, and now, I can be found pottering in my quiet house while the kids are at school baking cardamom and courgette cake with lime zest cream cheese icing thanks to Jamie Oliver. Mostly however, I use cardamom in curries for it's unique and intriguing flavour.

Last week I talked about my father. This week my long suffering mother needs some love. Poor mum! My father was such a blaze of attention-grabbing energy, that my mother is a shadowy figure in my early childhood memories, reduced to a series of images: throwing her head back laughing with friends on a sunlit balcony, her hands placing a ribboned cake before me on my birthday, a sense of her body always near, moving around me, in the car seat before me arguing with my father about directions. I remember her striped sundresses, her rows of shoes that I wanted to wear, her make-up box of red lipsticks and blue eyeshadows, and her glittering jewels in various patterned boxes that never failed to fascinate me. I spent hours on her bed, just touching them, placing beads around my neck and claiming them for my own one day. She smelled of Miss Dior or Nina Ricci with a faint whiff of Benson and Hedges. She was sometimes very cross and it made me desperate to please her.

After dad died it was like he made a space for mum. We grew closer, sharing our grief. We drank too much together and revealed things that only the best of friends would ever share. I realised that my mother was a poetic and complex soul - that she had taken on the role of mother with great fervour and almost neurotic need to be perfect, juggling running our home with flamboyance and precision with a demanding career firstly as accounts manager at my dad's production company, then as a freelance food stylist to film, television and print, and finally, when the stockmarket crashed, taking much of their savings with it, my mother became the family provider as dad was approaching 70. She bought a fruit and vegetable shop and went to the market every morning at 4am. I was in my late teens by then and I remember those years as they transformed her from a glamourous mother who entertained and travelled the world, to a woman with calloused hands from cutting pineapples and stacking spuds. She cut her hair blunt and short, wore no make-up and worried alot.

Eventually she sold the shop and soon after, her best friend, her great love, her treasured and passionately admired husband died.

Mum eventually emerged from the grief with such grace and beauty, like a butterfly shaky at first with freedom. She wrote poetry to share her feelings, showing to me in delicate increments, the woman she was deep inside, beyond mother and wife. She went on to have a successful career again in food styling and gathered around her a vibrant and fun community of women who love to party, play bridge, travel and paint.

I always thought it was my father I was most like - thinking that my desire to create, to write and express, to feel life so keenly - came from him. But I realise now that my mother was as much of an artist as him and that her flexibility, will and pragmatism are traits I could do well to emulate.

This is one of my favourite food memories from my youth: my mother's cardamom spiced beef rendang, taught to her originally by Charmaine Solomon.

Mum and Charmaine Solomon's Malaysian beef rendang (with cardamom)

(serves four with, hopefully some left-overs because it tastes even better the next day)

1.5 kg casserole steak cut into strips

4 medium potatoes cut into mouthful sized pieces

2 onions chopped

2 tbs chopped garlic

1 tbs chopped ginger

1 tbs chopped galangal (if unavailable use more ginger)

6 red chillies, deseeded

400 ml coconut milk

11/2 tsp salt

1 tsp turmeric powder

2 tsp chilli powder

3 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

3 cardamom pods, crushed

1 stalk lemongrass, bruised

1/2 c tamarind liquid

2 tsp sugar

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

In a heavy based casserole dish, fry the beef in a little oil till lightly browned.

To make the paste, put the onion, garlic, ginger, galangal, chillies and 1/2 a cup of water into a blender and mix until it forms a smooth paste.

Pour over the meat and add the remaining ingredients except for the tamarind and sugar. Bring to the boil.

Turn off the heat and add the tamarind and sugar and put the lid on the casserole. Put into the oven and cook for at least 1 hour or until the oil has separated from the gravy and the gravy has dried up.

Serve with rice and coriander - I like a bit of Greek yoghurt and lime with mine. 

I must admit, as a mother with two jobs and a blog to attend to, I often cheat and use a pre-made spice mix for my curries. As long as I add some of my own ingredients: extra fresh garlic and ginger, a stick of lemongrass, a squeeze of lime and a dash of fish sauce for green curries etc, I find them totally satisfactory.

The perfect sandwich

My father had many talents. Born in 1919, he was an old-fashioned gentleman who strove all his life to be current. He wore clothes like a dandy - apple green suits with feathered hats in the 1940's, silk shirts deeply unbuttoned with a gold Buddha at his olive-brown neck in the 1970's. When he died my mother counted some 200 shirts in his closet. He wrote radio plays before television was invented, then moved on to directing cult advertising commercials for Coke in the early 80's along with music clips for AC/DC and the first cooking videos for Australia's original celebrity chef, Charmaine Solomon.

He was a hopeless romantic, or else a bit of a Lothario. He was married three times before meeting my mother who was some 30 years younger than him. I was his first child, born when he was well into his 50's.

Dad taught me how to grab onto life, to be excited by it, and to never stop learning. He would sit at the end of my bed, a glass of scotch clinking in his long fingers, and improvise whole essays on art, literature, war, Greek mythology, the colonialistation of Australia (I did very well at school). He spoke fluent French, played piano, was a fine drawer and a writer of many (unpublished) crime novels.

But, foremostly, my father's motto was "I don't eat to live, I live to eat". While my mother churned out beautiful meal after meal all throughout my childhood without much fuss or performance, my father hogged the culinary spotlight, writing an Italian cookbook that took us all over Italy as guests of the best restaurants in each province.

But the one project that he never got off the ground, that was dearest to his gourmet heart, was his plans for a book in search of the perfect sandwich.

A good sandwich is very hard to find. I was lucky enough (or fated, it seems) to work in one of Sydney's most fashionable and favoured cafes - Latteria in Darlinghurst  - back when the press-down sandwich maker was still quite new to Australia. My boss was Italian. He used only the best ingredients: huge rounds of pecorino cheese hung from meat hooks, mayonnaise was made by his mother each night, mellow mortadella was imported from Italy, and the bread came hot each morning in a taxi from the Turkish bakery in Surrey Hills. We offered only 5 things for lunch. But they were 5 perfect sandwiches. And the recipe I am about to give is for the sandwich I ate every single day for over a year when working there. It's all to do with proportion - the proportion of each ingredient is paramount. And good bread of course. I have yet to find a brilliant sandwich in Manchester - it's all industrial mayonnaise slathered around defrosted caterer's chicken strips, tinned corn mushed in with bucket-loads of grey tuna. I'm sure it's different in London. I recently had an amazing courgette, smoked ham and taleggio pizza (which is, in essence, an open sandwich) at Story - a deli that reminded me of the kind of food and atmosphere I miss, that reminded me of what great cities can offer.

So, here it is, for you Dad: my perfect sandwich.

Tuna, pickled veg, parsley and mayonnaise


Best quality tinned tuna - I use Serena in Australia and Rio Mare in the UK
Pickled veg mix - or green olives
Parsley - leaves picked or chopped
Good mayonnaise - Helmans or home-made
A little lemon juice (optional)
Maldon salt, ground black pepper
Either light rye or Turkish pide

Method:

The thing is, not to use too much tuna - just cover the bread in one layer, rather than a great mountain of it., Make sure there is enough mayonnaise to moisten the whole thing, but not to make it gluggy and bland.
You can go crazy with the parsley - no-one ever felt sick from too much parsley. The pickles should be in nice small pieces, dotted evenly amongst it all. This sandwich also works really well in a hot sandwich press - press down hard so that the oil from the tuna and mayonnaise sneaks out a bit and turns the top of the bread gold and crisp.

Saigon monastry tofu and lemongrass

photo by Elaine Dunstan

In the wet season the rain in Ho Chi Minh City comes without warning. One minute the streets are their usual craze of millions of motorbikes beeping and darting like a swarm of crazy wasps, then suddenly, from nowhere, riders and passengers are covered in flimsy plastic cagoules, flapping like so many wings.

I lived in Vietnam with my husband and then two year old daughter for six months some years back. Standing at the balcony of our arrival hotel I lift my girl up to view the street below. Beep beep beep. Scooters perform a  mad dance; the small heads of babies wedged between parents as families of four cram on one bike. Dotted along the wide boulevard is stalls selling everything from noodle soup to t-shirts, cigarettes to french crepes. Women in pyjama suits of wildly patterned nylon crouch on corners peeling pineapples, cooking waffles, shouting 'manicure, pedicure, massage'.  

We have been warned about drinking tap water and the threat of bird flu hovers like some reckless fate - I decide to return to my vegetarian roots. 

We move into a typical two story concrete house with balcony opposite the local Cao Daism monastery. The street is its own kind of village, with laneways worming off from it. A hairdressers is set up in the downstairs of one house, a local kitchen sells breakfast of barbequed pork with fried egg, rice and pickles that the owners spend the rest of each day preparing. They sit outside on upturned buckets, hammering the meat on chopping boards on the path, meticulously sorting through each grain of rice. 

Our landlord and his wife - The Vans - sit in the lounge room on our first day of lease, eating plain rice from small bowls. A neat line of shoes is at the entrance. They have invited all the neighbours to come and have a peek at the newly decorated house and it's foreign tenants. Mrs Van takes me on the back of her bike to the local supermarket and picks Mickey Mouse sheets for Phoebe's bed as a house-warming gift.

The soundtrack of my life in Vietnam will be this: endless piano scales from our neighbour's son, 5 am and 5pm gongs and chants from the monastery, the schwip schwip each morning from the streets outside being swept by all the good wives, the echoing call of street sellers through the winding lanes of our village.

Each morning I share strong sweet coffee with the novice monk Ngoc, as he sits outside stirring huge pots of  beans on an open fire.

Ling, who works in the monastry kitchen, teaches me how to cook like a local; fried rice needs sugar and salt. We go to the supermarket and she chooses the right brand of soy sauce, the better rice. We are joined by Fin who sometimes lives in America and says he will interpret for us because he is my friend and "this is what friends do".

Fin is shocked at how much I buy, the careless way I have shopped. At the counter paying he remarks, "this means nothing to you, the cost of this shopping". I have spent about £15.

At home, Ling cooks tofu on a low flame, slowly turning each piece over with chopsticks, over and over until they are gold. I watch her transfixed, her every move is deliberate and measured. She pounds fat sticks of lemongrass down to a pulp and adds it to the pan with pepper and chilli and delicately places it all on a plate of finely sliced tomato and white onion.

I offer Ling some money to come over once a week and later that day a woman from down the lane comes knocking at my metal gate saying she is a much better cook than Ling and will have the job, and any spare clothes of my daughter's for her grandchild too please. Fin comes back in the evening asking for money for interpreting and gives me Ngoc's shoe size to buy him some new shoes. The Vans soon hear of my domestic industry and send around their daughter to do the ironing and cleaning. She asks for about £4 for a half day's work and yet still there is whispers I am paying too much.

Ngoc disappears. I miss his wide eyes through the gaps in my gate each morning waiting for coffee, his smooth hands reaching into the folds of his pale blue robe for a single orange to offer. I used to count this blessing like a gift from the Buddah himself. I never see him again. I never got him those shoes.

Everywhere I go I sense the subtle shift in posture, as women squatting at their open doors follow my passage through the village. I smile and say hello, rats scurry to drains below.

It's the middle of the day and the heat makes going outside unbearable. Children are being called inside from play. The piano finally ends its flow of rising and falling notes. A padlock clinks shut on our neighbours door. Smoke from the monastery incense makes a lazy arc to sun whitened sky. My daughter sleeps naked on the couch. I sit inside our little concrete house watching white lizards dart on walls. The sound of this silence like solitude, anonymity.

Ling's tofu and lemongrass

(I recently had a great version of this classic Vietnamese vegetarian dish in London, Hoxton at Cay Tre http://www.vietnamesekitchen.co.uk/  Thanks Brian!)

1 packet firm tofu, sliced into pieces about 2cm thick

2 stalks of lemongrass, outer layer peeled off, pounded

1-2 small red chillis chopped

1 tsp tumeric

generous splash of soy sauce

pinch of salt/pepper to taste

1/4 c groundnut oil for frying

2 medium tomatoes thinly sliced

1-2 white salad onions finely sliced

Asian basil leaves for garnish

Method:

Fry the tofu in hot oil, turning with chopsticks until gold on each side. You may want want to pour some oil from the pan off before making the sauce.

Add to the pan the lemongrass, chilli, tumeric, stir a few times then add the soy and sugar and let bubble and combine flavours. About 3 mintues.

Place the tomato and onoin on a flat plate and pour the hot tofu mix on top. Finish with some basil leaves and serve with rice and/or some crunchy spring rolls, iceberg leaves and Vietnamese mint.

An altar to the fig

Lately, the perfect form of figs have been haunting me from their marked-down tubs at Tescos. Turkish sirens reduced to 50p for three. There is something almost taboo about their bruised black skin and fleshy inners. It seems a violation not to buy them before they fade.

Figs are needy little beauties requiring some form of devotion, at the least, some tender respect. The only recipe I knew off the top of my head was a salad made with jamon, butter beans, baby cos and quartered figs. But it's not salad weather.

Last winter, by the end, as I crawled out from the cave of my ubiquitous parka and into the glaring light of the (don't tell anyone) tanning salon for just a few sessions, to get some vitamin D, I stared in horror at my naked reflection. My wobbly tummy and thighs. I vowed not to let this happen again, to stop squirreling the winter away with dashes of cream, mountains of parmesan and mid-morning croissants.

Drizzle drizzle drizzle. My days are again encased by the bleak weeping cloud that is the Manchester sky. What to do with these figs?

A galette. Pastry, really good pastry. It seems like the perfect, decadent yet fragile altar to the sexy little figs. Because I only had 5 figs, I added some slices of apple and that damson jam I made. And already I am dispersing nibbles with sit-ups. One slice equals twenty sit-ups, twenty squats, ten leg lifts.
Perhaps it will work.

(Also, I made the tart with beautiful new season heritage apples as there was enough pastry to make one small tart (the fig) and one large (the apple). I paired the apple galette with some Bon Mamman peach jam.

Fig, apple and damson galette

(To make one large tart, serve with optional sit-ups)

1 1/2 c plain flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon fine polenta

pinch of salt

170g unslated butter cut into small squares and chilled briefly in the freezer (French President is brilliant)

6-7 tablespoons iced water

smear of damson jam (or any you fancy, marmalade would work)

about 10 figs, cut into slim wedges

some slices of apple (with a squeeze lemon juice to prevent browning)

sugar to sprinkle

Method:

Combine the flour, sugar, polenta and salt in a big bowl.

In a food processor, with the blade on, put in flour mix and add butter. Don't mix for too long, just until it forms crumbs, some larger bits of butter can remain.

Put the mix back into the bowl and add the water, one tablespoon at a time, combining with a fork until it forms a dough.

Shape the dough into a ball and cover in plastic and refridgerate for one hour or overnight.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Line a baking tray with parchment.

Roll out your pastry on a lightly floured surface into a roughly round shape about 30cm in diameter.

Transfer the pastry onto the baking tray and smear some jam in a circle leaving a 5cm edge for folding later. 

Working from the outer edge of the jam circle, place slices of fig then apple until you get to the centre.

Fold the edges over and sprinkle the exposed fruit with a little more sugar.

Bake for 40-50 mins.

My favourite little cafe

Like so many people I have the dream of owning a cafe one day; although I'd probably have to open it on some small Mediterranean island customed by locals with relaxed attitudes to consistency. I want the freedom to close for a day at the beach when needed, or to change the menu daily. I would amble to the market in the morning, have coffee and a chat to the charming barissta then reverently choose my produce while planning what to serve. Then I'd cook all day to music and put fresh flowers on the tables. Oh, and I'd only open for lunch: simple, tasty plates like polenta with browned mushrooms and parsley, broadbean pesto on sourdough with some leaves or tuna, green olive and artichoke pasta. My kids could do their homework sat at the bar munching on peaches, drinking hot chocolate in the mild winter.

I made something for lunch yesterday that I'd definitely put on the menu: ricotta and zucchini crostini. I decided to keep the Australian zucchini rather than courgette as I say now in England, because it rhymed nicely with crostini. It takes about 2 minutes to make and yet it comes across as something rather special and refined, the delicate creamy flavour of the ricotta is clean against the crisp richly oiled bread and peppery courgette.

Ricotta and Zucchini Crostini

(serves 4 for lunch or as a classy little starter)

75ml extra-virgin olive oil

8 slices of good bread (I used Chorlton sourdough from The Barbikan deli)

2 medium courgettes thinly sliced on rounds

8 tablespoons ricotta

lots of ground black pepper

a little maldon sea salt

Method:

Heat the oil in a fry pan and add the bread, as many slices as you can fit without overlapping. Cook the bread on both sides until it had turned a pale gold.

Cook the courgette slices in the same oil and season with pepper and salt. Toss pan around so that both sides of the courgette get browned.

Spread the crostini with the ricotta and top with courgette and a little more pepper.

***

Another thing I made recently as part of a tapas with friends was cannelini beans, cornichons, egg and peppers. It was something we had on the tapas sharing plate at De Los Santos and I really like the combination of colours and textures; the smooth round beans (white) and tangy crunchy cornichons (green) melded with crumbly egg (yellow) and a lemon dressing. The addition of (red) peppers was an after-thought of mine as I had a jar bought back from Spain by my friend Marie-Noel.

Cannelini Beans with cornichons, egg and peppers 

(Serve as part of a tapas)

400g tin of cannelini beans drained

2 tablespoons of cornichons thinly sliced

1 organic egg hard boiled

1 red pepper roasted, skin removed and sliced

a dressing of lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil seasoned and shook-up

You can dress the salad a few hours before serving and it keeps in the fridge for a couple of days, but tastes best served at room temperature.

  

A pie for my love

Gareth loves a pie. He welcomes a pie from the oven like a lover in a new dress - a little whistle, a side look of lust. I never trust my ability to make pastry; sometimes my pies look more like an ill-fitting op-shop frock than designer threads, but none the less, my husband still pays his compliments for the effort sincerely made.

But! This time it really, really worked and she was so beautiful I had to take a photo of her.

Gareth bought me the Rick Stein's Spain cookbook as an anniversary gift (the gift that gives back) and so I made an empanada last week. My connection to Spanish cooking is long and impassioned - from the volatile year I spent working in the kitchen of the restaurant owned by my Spanish boyfriend with his mother - to my time cooking with the lovely Diana at her gorgeous tapas restaurant in Melbourne, De Los Santos.

Both experiences brought out what I called my inner mamma. I felt that the food of Spain required in the cooking a kind of inherent spirit, a Latin passion that guided your hands in the measuring and cutting and theatre of the kitchen. In these two all-female kitchens, we talked about love, we cried about the past, we sang to the radio, we sweated and cursed and laughed and worked our arses off. I loved it. I loved the food, which was a revelation of flavours to me, my experience so far being mostly of Italian and South-East Asian flavours. I was astounded at the mix of roasted squash with cumin, of squid with orange, of thick creamy butter beans with slow-cooked rabbit. I made potato tortilla everyday at  De Los Santos and could never resist eating a wedge warm with a slice of our home made bread.

So, anyway, perhaps it's no surprise that my empanada worked (and was admired and devoured by Gareth) - here's the recipe:

Empanada of tuna with tomatoes, peppers and pimenton
(Adapted from Rick Stein's Spain)


310g plain flour
3/4 tsp fast-action dried yeast
1/2 smoked paprika
125ml warm water
60ml olive oil
1 good egg, beaten to glaze
salt

For the filling:


3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion chopped
2 garlic cloves crushed
1 red pepper seeded and chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 400g can chopped tomato
250g best-quality tinned tuna in olive oil (I use Italian tuna, not the horrible grey mush from most supermarket brands)
A handful of green olives
Pepper

Method:

Make your dough by sifting the flour, yeast and paprika into a large mixing bowl, make a well in the centre.
Dissolve the yeast in the water and add to the dry ingredients untill a dough is formed.
Knead on a floured surface for 5 minutes until smooth.
Return to a clean bowl, cover and leave somewhere warm for 1 hour to rise.
For the filling, fry the onion, garlic, red pepper and pimento on a low heat for a long time (15 mins) until soft and sweet but not burnt.
Add the tomatoes and cook gently for a further 25 mins until the sauce is thick, not watery.
Add the tuna and olives to the sauce and turn off, allowing to cool slightly.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.
Grease a baking tray (I used a flan tin) with some butter.
Bring out the dough and cut the ball in two - one piece slightly larger than the other.
Roll out the larger piece to fit your tray, and place in tray leaving about 1cm overhanging.
Spoon the sauce into the tin and sprinkle over the remaining olive oil.
Roll the second piece of dough out and brush the edges of the pastry in the tin with the egg before laying the lid on.
Pierce the top with a fork and brush with egg.
Bake for 30 mins or until golden.
Serve with love!

Sexy Spanish mushy peas and urban kitchen wonders

The end of summer and rain in England.

A recent holiday back home to Australia ( http://www.takethefamily.com/features/long-haul-family-holidays-byron-bay-australia )  left us cashless and marooned in Manchester for the long six weeks of school holidays. One week - bare shoulders, properly warm and jubilant - I bought a paddling pool for the kids. It was the last day of sun. All the next week it rained and the grey blanket of sky wrapped us in a dreary embrace.

So I watched Rick Stein's Spain and yearned for the Mediterranean. The reliable heat: hot and hotter hours of long days. Finding that groove of holiday where everything tastes better and the light illuminates in a more flattering manner. I seem to cook better and look better in the Med. A stall of sunrich tomatoes and courgettes is enough to inspire a meal. I dress more simply - like my cooking, I need less faffing. It takes a week, but by week two, my husband Gareth and I  imagine ourselves to be kindred locals.

A local served up a great dish of broadbeans with mint and ham to Rick that got me cooking. Broadbeans have just come out of season, so use frozen if there is none to be found, just take their skins off after defrosting in some cold water. To keep things seasonal, I don't see why you can't use runner beans or french beans cut into 2cm lengths. I altered the recipe from the Spanish meat-medley - it had hock and black pudding - which I replaced with panchetta cubes as I never like to mix meats in one day let alone one dish. He used fresh garlic and included the green top part of the bulb - I found fresh garlic at the organic grocer - it's subtly different in flavour but has a really different texture, the cloves covered in a moist skin.

It was the technique of  cooking the beans down in stock with mint that I was curious to try. It was amazing, like sexy mushy peas all silky and minty and we mopped it up with toasted sourdough drizzled with some extra virgin olive oil.

Broadbeans with panchetta and mint
(Serves 2 for a rustic dinner)

2 tbs olive oil
150g panchetta cubes
2 white salad onions roughly chopped
3 big cloves of garlic chopped
2 cups of podded, skinned, fresh broadbeans (blanch the fresh beans for a few minutes then peel off the outer skin)
2 generous sprigs of mint
2-3 cups of veg or chicken stock
sea salt and  black pepper

Method:

In a heavy-bottomed fry pan fry the panchetta on a medium heat in oil till golden, then add the onion and cook till softened before adding the garlic.

When the garlic has released it's scent and softened but not browned add the broadbeans and stir to coat with the flavours of the oil.

Pour in the veg or chicken stock, add the mint and season (be careful with the salt as panchetta and stock can be very salty already). Turn the heat to high and let bubble for a minute before turning the heat to the lowest temperature and putting on a tight fitting lid (or covering with foil).

Let cook for about 20 minutes unitill the broadbeands are really soft and almost collapsing. Serve hot on toasted sourdough brushed or drizzled with oil and a crispy salad and/or fried potatoes.

                                                                           ***      

I am amazed at how much food is growing in Manchester. It's like being pregnant and suddenly so is every other woman - once I saw one tree groaning with apples in a neighbours garden - I began to see fruit and food growing everywhere. Rosemary, apples, pears, wild mushrooms sprouting in moist parks, cabbages in council planters, green tomatoes destined for chutney.

Gareth and the kids love scrambling around the garden of the abandoned house next door to us. They usually come back screaming from bramble pricks or ant bites or nettle stings, but last week they came bearing a bucket of mottled skinned pears. River, our four year old boy, ate them peeled and cut up, one after another; loving them perhaps in that way that eating something you have grown or picked or even just seen growing makes the experience richer, better, fascinating - so removed from the source are we normally.

Eventually, he tired of pears and so I decided to make a cake. It's an Italian recipe and can be used with plums too. Speaking of plums, I MADE JAM!

In my effort to be more like Jane, I used the bag of damsons we picked from her tree at Rushall House and made my first ever jam. It was easy: cook the plums, strain the flesh from the stones, add equal quantities of sugar to fruit and cook again with some lemon zest till it's thick enough to resist sliding down a plate...nice.

Italian pear cake

About 5 pears peeled and quartered
150g melted butter plus some for greasing
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150g castor sugar
250g plain flour sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Method:

Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Grease a springfoam cake tin with butter.
Put eggs, vanilla and sugar in a bowl and whip until voluminous, pale and fluffy, pour in melted butter and fold in.
Add flour and baking powder and mix gently with a wooden spoon to incorporate.
Put half the pears on the bottom of the tin, scrape cake mix over them, top with remaining pears.
Bake for about 1 hour or until golden and set.
Serve with pouring cream.