Entries Tagged 'Feeding people' ↓

Jill Dupleix is a smasher, and she certainly seems to like smashing things - she had a recipe in The Age the other day which called for smashed garlic cloves. She published this recipe, also in The Age, as the very prosaic “Roast Boiled potatoes”. Recently, I saw a reference to it by the foodie John Lethlean, under the much more satisfying name of “Jill Dupleix’s Smashed potatoes”.

This recipe is going viral. I found Dupleix’s original recipe here, via this wee Scottish blog (love the header), and another one on a Brazilian blog, the Technicolor Kitchen. In this incarnation it’s called Crash-hot potatoes.

But wait- there’s more! there’s an international dispute surrounding this recipe, no less. Did Dupleix steal Florentine chef Michael Chiarello’s Potatoes Da Delfina? No, it seems. Jill spills the beans here to blogger Trish at Light Sweet Crude. (H/T to Zoe.)

Get enough small, round floury potatoes to cover the base of a roasting pan or pyrex dish. You could use chats, new or whatever name your greengrocer gives to little’uns. If you don’t have this type of potato I suppose there is no law against cutting up bigger ones, it just won’t look as posh. Get the oven going berserk - 220 celsius or even hotter.

Boil the potatoes until they’re cooked, but not terribly soft. Drain them and tip them into the roasting pan so they’re kind of jostling together. You only want one layer.

Press a potato masher down on each potato so it bursts slightly. Don’t mash them - just break them a little. They should all be crowded together and touching each other.

Drizzle all of them with some EVOO, then sprinkle coarse sea or rock salt and fresh rosemary over the lot. How much EVOO is up to you. I like lots, but YMMV.

Incinerate in the hot oven for maybe fifteen-twenty minutes until the broken tops of the potatoes are golden brown and crusty and the interiors have done with any unfinished cooking business. You’re after soft, fluffy spuds with a salty baked crust. Too easy.

The Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs, Chris Bowen, announced today that he’d formally received the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC’s) report on grocery prices. It’ll be public next week, but it’s already apparent that it will recommend unit pricing. At least that will save those poor blokes you see in the “baby aisle” doing mobile phone calculations to work out which size package has the cheapest unit price on nappies - hint, fellas: it’s always the smallest packet.

I don’t hold out much hope for the ACCC review. There will be Strong Measures to Increase Competition amongst supermarkets, of course. Zoning laws to stop capitalist bullies. And even a “GroceryWatch”. I shit you not. Why bother when “Coles and Woolworths together control 78 per cent of Australia’s packaged grocery sales worth $59 billion a year.”

The issue of food security and how we should eat is getting a lot of coverage on Radio National, in part connected to the delivery and release of the report. Life Matters today featured a great discussion about how pricing and availability affects people on lower incomes (you can hear the segment here for the next week, after that this site will give you the idea) and Encounter looks to be covering it from a more global perspective. (Sunday am/Weds night or podcast).

So with all this earnest concern I’ve been pondering t h e - g o b b l e r ‘ s question of whether a “War on Foodies!” is coming:

‘Aren’t they just pushing a very sophisticated & elite point of view?’ was the point I gleaned from tonight’s Counter-point on ABC’s radio national.

This implication combined with the very real emerging divide between the realities of nourishing your family within your economic actuality & the constant barrage of cooking celebs insisting that unless you are buying free-trade, seasonally, locally, SOLE [sustainable, organic, local and ethical] etc somehow you are not doing the right thing & you have a compelling recipe for disenfranchisement. This is what is pounced upon by those who are keen to get traction with this cultural-divide argument.

I agree that celebrity chefs can be annoying, but anyone that driven in their life is usually a bit painful. And while equitable access to food concerns me, truth be told I’m not that worried about ending up in a food culture war, for I shall beat their puny warriors over the head with slabs of my frozen homemade veal stock and their inadequately nourished bodies will crumble before my righteous wrath. Ha!

Cooking at home is a joy for me, but it isn’t for many people. Apparently some of them get pissed off finding out what they’re missing out on. More fool them.

If you’re attempting to make a convert, you could do worse than Mochachocolata-Rita’s list of reasons in favour of home cooking, which boils down to it’s fun, cheap and gets you the sexies. (Usage note: that final term being the one currently employed by my kindergartener son and his best mate; the correct construction is that you “do the sexies” on someone.)

While I’ve always been interested in food and cooking it wasn’t until my first stretch of stay-at-home mothering that I began making almost all the food we ate each day. It’s what made me a good cook, rather than a just a bourgie girl with a lot of cookbooks and a well stocked pantry.

Because we were living on one income, and not a huge one at that, I needed to wise up. I started shopping at the Fyshwick and Belconnen produce markets, and for a while when we were really skint I would buy a week’s worth of fruit and veg in the last hour of sales on Sunday before the Fyshwick markets closed until the following Thursday. We never ate badly, but I’m glad that I don’t have to fight my way through all the diplomatic plated cars for a park at Fyshwick on Sundays anymore.

For a long while, I became a serious fan of the Canberra Farmer’s Market. I don’t remember hearing about it starting up, but it wasn’t long after it was begun in early 2004 by the Rotary Club in nearby Hall.

My joy came partly because I could buy Infinity sourdough there. One of the biggest (and saddest) adjustments following moving to Canberra in 2002 was the lack of proper bread, particularly since I’d been living in Enmore in inner Sydney and was accustomed to being able to buy La Tartine bread at the Alfalfa House Co-op at end of my street. *sigh* But then I found Silo, which makes better bread than Infinity.

Still, many of the good things at the Market are very, very good. Like the warm spiced apple cider you can see my shadow clutching over there ⇐

Despite being generally very happy with the produce, I stopped being a fan of the whole “Farmers’ Market” experience. It was a combination of little things. There was an element of the Free Range Children Market For Inner City Pretentious Wankers, to borrow a term from Purple Goddess - I’m looking at you, posh lady with the $9 jars of “breakfast prunes” - but it wasn’t just that.

The punters began coming earlier and earlier, and some stall holders were so busy serving customers two hours before the markets were advertised as beginning that they didn’t have time to set out their produce properly. Part of the whole relaxed and friendly vibe of the markets was lost in the crowds of pushy people. And until they put up signs forbidding it, people took dogs into the food selling areas. Alright, you’re in a building that says “Sheep Pavilion”, but you wouldn’t dream of taking your stupid fluffy white dog to the supermarket, would you?

I became annoyed that some stalls were obviously reselling purchased items - the variety and seasonality of the produce ostensibly from one origin gave it away. And some smaller stallholders whose produce was really out of this world - like Tallabung heritage breeds pork, the best pork that I have ever eaten - sold their business and while the brand is sold there, it’s lost the artisanal flavour that made it so astonishing. And it’s a lot more expensive. So I was pleased to see the markets separated into a “direct producer” and “not” sheds last year, as it meant I had to do less wandering to find the stalls I was after.

But even despite the consistently excellent quality of the best stallholders - my favourites are the fresh South Coast seafood, the Amore cakes, Li Shen exotic mushrooms, Yulin Shanghai tofu and street snacks and Glean Na Meala spuds and greens - I found myself going to the Farmers’ Markets less and less. Since Glenn Na Meala opened Choku Bai Jo, I’ve been to the markets on one exploratory trip, for this post.

I might have gone more often if their website wasn’t so difficult to use - it’s a great example of how to stuff up using the web.

The site is set up as an internal administrative tool rather than a communication tool; I want to know what people are going to be selling this week, not where to download a form to sell my produce. Fair enough that there be a admin area for stallholders, but how about a simple site that is useful for customers too? Even an email newsletter that says what’s on this week? What to make with it? Their PR people seem fixated on mainstream press coverage rather than making their clients’ goods accessible to lots of different types of consumers. In summer, there are fantastic peaches and nectaries straight from the growers in Araluen - but how do you know when they are arriving? (When peaches are in season, I know, but you get my drift.)

In discussions at playgroups and waiting to pick up kids from school I hear other food loving parents complain that going to the markets has become another chore, rather than a pleasurable way to buy your food. I’ve also heard complaints that it’s not always cheaper than the supermarket. To my mind it needn’t be, because the quality and freshness are so much better, but to many people Farmers’ Market = super cheap. Something else for the PR peeps.

The site’s photo galleries are terrible - it’s a popup and the images still bear their camera sequence names. But it’s surprising to see the difference between April 2004 and now; maybe twenty stall holders and a couple of dozen milling food lovers then and two big sheds plus two separate outdoor areas and hundreds of regular customers now. The rest of the set from my trip to the markets is up at my flickr.

I will still go to the markets occasionally, and probably more in spring and summer. But for now, it’s just not worth the bother, when $45 at Choko Bai Jo buys you this (including the bowl of local hazelnuts), most of it organically produced but not certified organic, and sorry about the photo:

The Capital Region Farmers’ Market is held Saturdays at Exhibition Park (EPIC), from 8-11 am

Rachel of Thus Bakes Zarathustra is presently sojourning with a bunch of Yankee pointyheads in pursuit of her PhD. Writing at TBZ’s previous incarnation she said:

… The thing is the next day I came home from the library starving and sick of books, and there was a bowl of carrot and avocado salad in the fridge and this cake, and I ate it and I felt a rush of righteous maturity akin to flossing my teeth or getting a pap smear.

We all need that feeling sometimes, don’t we?

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Those of us who live in the climatic zones of Canberra and Katoomba are currently freezing their bloody tits off, and there’s nothing more warming than a very nice pudding. Here is a recipe that really hits the spot for winter. It tastes divine. It invokes memories of grandmotherly warmth (at least for those of us who had grandmothers who could cook. Mine couldn’t, so for me it invokes memories of wishing I had one of those other grandmothers. You know, the nice dainty ones, who could cook). It is quick and requires no special ingredients. And did I mention it tastes divine?

This has been adapted from the PWMU – short for the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union – Cookbook, first printed 1904 and reprinted at least 18 times in the interval between the first edition and this one, which dates from 1973, just before Presbyterians became Uniting Churchies.

This particular volume was pocketed when I cleaned out a blind poet’s house. I figured she wouldn’t notice it was gone. Now it’s subject to a custody battle because my ex says he was closer to the blind poet than I was and it came from his mother’s house anyway. I am, so far, resisting all entreaties to return it.

Part of the reason I love it because it shows how far we have come since the culinary dark ages that beset the country between 1788 and Margaret Fulton. It has ‘International Recipes’ - only one example from any country, ordered alphabetically, by country rather than recipe. ‘Savouries’, which might be called hors’ d’ouevres elsewhere, include Angels on Horseback, Curried Eggs, Devilled Kidneys, Scots Eggs and, completing the unholy circle, Devils on Horseback and it includes recipes for Tripe and Onions, Boiled Fowl and Jugged Hare.

All this means it is a boon for anyone hunting traditional recipes. It’s got loads of good soup, sauce and stew recipes, which show a bit of French influence, as you would expect. It contains the recipes my beleaguered home economics teachers tried to impart to me back in my country childhood, which I never wrote down, even though I have never forgotten how good they tasted. I consult it most often when baking or preparing puddings. My faves are Golden Syrup Dumplings, Kiss Biscuits, and this one, which is, as I have noted, a bit of an adaptation.

Lemon Delicious Pudding

Single girls should know that the production of one of these desserts weakens the knees of red blooded males but they only take 10 minutes to put together and you can bake them while you eat the main and linger over the wine. All you require is some familiarity with bringing egg whites to a stiff peak, and folding things in gently (you see, this is a seductive pudding).

Firstly, get your oven nice and moderately warm – somewhere between 150 and 180 degrees, depending on the ferocity or otherwise of your beast. Get a soufflé or deep pie dish or bowl and butter it liberally.

Then grab your blender/food processor/mix master or, if you have neither, a spoon and bowl and cream together 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of butter. While you are doing that, take a lemon and grate all the rind off it. Chuck the rind in with the sugar and butter so it’s macerated (and smells divine). Then add ¼ cup of self-raising flour. Juice the lemon, and put all the juice in with the sugar mix and add a cup of milk – lite milk is fine.

Then carefully separate two eggs. Because I know many people are stumped by this instruction I shall explain. Crack the egg over a bowl just once and use your fingers to prize the shell in half, catching the yolk in one half. Tip the shell until the white falls into the bowl, and pass it into the other half as you need to. Be careful not to snag the yolk – your egg whites will never reach their peak (same goes for fat). Use a hand mixer to whip the egg whites sitting in your bowl until they form stiff peaks – the stiffer the better. Then add the yolks to the lemon mix. Here’s a picture, with the lemon mix safely in the blender. Note also wine bottle.

Now fold the blender mixture into the egg whites to lightly disperse the flour and flavourings through the whites. Do this using a spatula or something, so you don’t bash the air out of the egg whites. You don’t need to do any more than this.

Then pour it in the pie dish. You can sit the dish in a bowl of water, but I don’t think you have to. Bake it for about an hour and a half. The top will set, and you’ll have a nice saucy bottom, and it will look something like this – all the lemony goodness is under the crust.

Eat it whenever you feel like it – sometimes they sag as they cool but the point is they are not soufflés and remain delicious. You can refrigerate and reheat if there are leftovers (hah!). What you will find is it’s different every time you cook it, particularly if your oven is cantankerous. Shorter cooking times produce a white fluffy meringue with a nice brown crust and a tart sloppy sauce underneath – if that’s the way you really like them, cut the flour back to two tablespoons, as PWMU recommends. If you cook them longer you’ll get a cakey meringue, like a self-saucing pudding.
By the way, I fell in love with these puddings at Varuna, The Writers’ House, where the famed cook Sheila serves them. She uses limes, and they are inimitably macaroony.

I’ve been sick for nearly two weeks (I’m never sick!) and both the kids are feverish snot covered whirlwinds. So yeah, not cooking much.

Thank God for my friends Nigel and Willa. Nigel turned up early yesterday morning bearing his mother’s heirloom casserole dish full of a beautiful tomato and silverbeet soup (with cinnamon) made by Willa.

Some cous cous to improve the child spoonability factor, and lots of pepper and a squeeze of one neighbour Billy’s Meyer lemons for the grown ups. Wonderful.

Giving food is a beautiful gift, particularly for new parents or single parents. Don’t be shy, just make up a big tray of something delicious and take it around. This is the one situation where I think disposable foil cooking trays can be a Good Thing, because the new parents feel no obligation to clean and return other people’s cooking equipment. (I prefer the beautiful dish this came in and will enjoy returning it, but I don’t have a newborn. Which is also a Good Thing.)

When my dear friend Jude had her second child, her neighbour arranged seven households into a roster, and for one night a week for six weeks, we cooked for the enlarged family. It was such a wonderful thing to turn up, drop off the food and see the relieved faces. Sometimes I would stay for a glass of wine, but usually I would just scoot off after no more than ten minutes or so. And how I loved cooking for them! I would turn up with things like a big bowl of washed and picked over leaves, a little bag of really good vinaigrette and a container of marinated and grilled chicken, baked sweet potato and very fresh nuts. And always a dessert. Breastfeeding women need sweets.

There’s a simpler way we can give food too, by just clicking at the hunger site.