The Elegant Sufficiency

Price Check 2

Wanted to slam this up fast... prices change depending on supply, demand, time of the season, of course, so in a few days' time these charts may be moot. Thanks for all your help gathering prices. I think the results are interesting enough even if the methodology might have Roy Morgan spluttering in his cornflakes.
In Sydney, I wanted to get to Fratelli Fresh and Harris Farm, but ran out of time, and I haven't had the time to study these prices in depth, but these are the things that strike me as most worth pointing out. Probably no surprise to most of you:

• If you want to save money, go to the markets! Even farmers' markets seem cheaper, which surprised me;
• I'm amazed that the markets in the centre of Sydney, the most expensive real estate in the country, have the best prices in this lot. How good are those Paddy's Market prices? (I could have got 10 limes for $2...)
• It follows then, that if you're in the business of saving money, shop where Asian-Australians shop such as Paddys Markets and Campsie: they won’t put up with overpricing;
• No surprise that you'll always get better prices when you buy greater quantities: for example, three avocadoes for $6 at La Manna in Melbourne, as opposed to $2.50 each.
• The hair-raising price of organics at Queen Victoria Market (do they match other organic outlets?);
• Interesting the consistency of many of the prices at different locations for Coles and Woolworths outlets.

Have I missed anything worth pointing out?

•    In a couple of places here where I haven’t been sure of what you’ve told me, or you didn’t get the price, I’ve put n/a — doesn’t mean the shop doesn’t stock it.

A Surry Hills Girl

Just finished reading Ruth Park's The Harp in the South (the title apparently refers to Irish immigrants in Australia), which is set in my once desperately poor Sydney neighborhood — Surry Hills. Love to walk city streets here, anywhere, and try and catch in my head how they might have been in the past. (The Herald's 100 Years of Herald Photography has been quite brilliantly helpful in that...) In Surry Hills, the remnants of old signage (love the Paramount movies sign on the Deco building in Brisbane Street), the crooked narrow streets lined with mean terraces, the old factories (now apartment conversions, of course), and the corner pubs, all tell a story. But Ruth Park does it better. I won't be able to walk these streets now without seeing ghostly, grubby barefoot urchins disappearing around corners, hat-wearing drunks weaving their paths home after the Six O'Clock Swill, and frumpy, weary housewives in aprons sweeping frontsteps.
Hilarious too, to read of the "Surry Hills girl". Says the pawnbroker Joseph Mendel to Hughie, when the drunk father attempts to seek some redress for the loss of his (pregnant) daughter Roie's honour:

"You are perhaps aware that a Surry Hills girl finds it difficult to obtain a position in the city. She may be educated; she may be more highly moral that similar young ladies in more prosperous suburbs, but her address is against her. Most Sydney people persist, somewhat biasedly, perhaps, in thinking of Surry Hills in terms of brothels, razor-gangs, tenements, and fried fish shops."

Have been wondering what that red light in the building across from me is... (have been told that my neighborhood is home to swingers groups and sex clubs...) And love too, Park's prose on the family's Christmas pudding.

"Now Hughie had, long ago, been a shearers' cook, and could make a curry hot, sweet and luscious, with surprising bits of chopped-up date, green peaches, and sliced banana floating mysteriously in it. And he could make soup, and brownie, and the curiously named sea pie, which is nothing more than a stew with an oversize dumpling roofing it. But, best of all, he could make a boiled pudding, dark as midnight and rich as Persia, and containing so many dates, prunes, cherries, sultanas, and currants, that, as Hughie himself modestly said: 'You couldn't spit between them'."

Ruhlman on Trends

Interesting stuff here: Michael Ruhlman called for readers to share with him what they thought were the next food trends. The return of lard, growing your own food, and making your own charcuterie, cheese and preserves were frequent suggestions. Can we add any here?

Price Check

Listen, this is an exercise in convalescing-induced curiosity for me as much as anything, but it’d be much more interesting if y’all chipped in from wherever you might be — Gundagai to Goondiwindi, Prahran Markets to Perth and Penrith, Noosa to Nedlands, Alphington to Ulladulla and Ipswich — hey, even Toronto, Brooklyn, Zurich, Glastonbury, Nairobi and Nauru. (I’ll even do the currency conversions for you.)
I’d like to work out some sort of chart that gives some sort of indication about comparative fresh produce prices.
Sparked by a range of things including, but not limited to:

• My need to shave some expenses from my blown-out expenditure in preparation for my Japan holiday and my consequent interest in where I’m better off shopping;
• My curiosity about whether I’m being budget conscious if I shop at better fruit and vegetable shops in inner-city Sydney as opposed to supermarkets — as, of course, any food-loving person prefers to do;
• The headline news: in the Herald this week, front-page news about the Federal Government’s intention to make it easier for foreign supermarket chains to enter Australia, so increasing competition;
• The sense I have that everyone is tightening their belts (a meatloaf post is to come) and the fact that we seem to be entering a new era of food shortages;
• My brothers’ recent rantings about one of the two major Australian supermarket chains — can’t remember which one it was, Coles or Woolworths, but he was passionate in his disdain for it … I’ll get back to you on that. Suspect others may share similar antipathy towards the chains.

As you’ll see here, I’ve chosen some fruit and vegetable items to focus on. I’m going to have a look at a couple of places this weekend and add to the list of prices. I’d like then to add up the cost of a shopping basket of the same items from each place. Not very scientific I’m sure, but maybe a little indicative, a little useful, a little interesting. Throw your thoughts at me if you’d like to contribute… email me or comment with prices for the following and maybe we’ll have a conclusion to muse over at the end of it all. (Any organic shoppers out there? Talk to me!)

Food in Film

You have to wonder who has time to do this. But I'm terribly impressed and grateful nonetheless. And maintain that Ang Lee's Eat, Drink, Man, Woman should be at the top of the list. Oh to have such an ability with a cleaver.

Comfort Food

There just isn't the energy in these parts for much right now, except gratitude for Dad's potato soup, sister-in-law Jo's extraordinary chocolate cake, my mother's folk remedy of lemon, honey and olive oil to sooth a sore throat, and my niece's unstinting ability to leave a cheerful trail of crumbs in her wake. A surgeon sliced into my neck late last week to extract half a thyroid. Neck swollen and swathed in ice-pack and/or scarf. Voice husky. Brain anaesthetised. Self-pity extreme. Will attempt to return with something intelligent soon. Oh, and that chocolate cake recipe.

Words of Note 4

Here’s another, long-long-overdue, instalment of engaging blog excerpts discovered during my online wanderings:

“I'm terribly bored of self-indulgent writers who instead of communicating the febrile joys of appetite, try to make like Keats and pen something more akin to An ode to a Grecian Urn. This is dinner we're talking about, not a walk through the daisies, and it demands a language which reflects that.”
The very clever Guardian writer Jay Rayner on Word of Mouth.

“In between meals we visited Padma’s friends and their farms. On one such visit, one friend was informed of the birth of a calf, and asked if she would like to take some of the colostrum-rich first milk from the cow. She declined and I was heartbroken. It is not everyday, rather never, that I can get kharvas in Delhi.”
Anita on A Mad Tea Party describing a visit to the south-western Indian state of Karnataka.

“Or you could recall the words of Australian writer Carmel Bird in her book Dear Writer: 'You have the choice of a clean house or a finished story. The choice is yours.’ ”
Ask the Bronte Sisters explores writers' procrastination — the magical lure that housework has when there’s writing to be done.

“Anthony (Bourdain), it's time we talked. The thing is, you've been talking a lot of shit. And you've been doing a lot of bitching and moaning about how we joy-hating terrorist vegans ruin your day. ... And I know whenever one of us sets foot in one of your tourist traps of culinary mediocrity, you huff around like Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer, roll your eyes, slice some eggplant, charge us $25 for it and take another smoke break. That's cool. We're not overly concerned. Because, Anthony, you're kind of tragically wrong about us. … So we aren't just going to "enjoy" food, we're going to enjoy vastly improved, veganized versions of your masturbatory, blood-oozing recipes. And then we're going to compile them, sell them in zine form, and donate the proceeds to vegan outreach organizations and farm sanctuaries — in your name. Anthony, I have to say, I'm really looking forward to the great work we're going to do together for veganism. This is an open call to vegan cooks of all stripes: professional chefs and bakers, cookbook authors, food bloggers, amateur cooks, and — perhaps most importantly — ordinary, everyday people who just want to live their lives and eat their dinners without unnecessary heckling from the heroin-addled peanut gallery.”
The call to arms of “Monsieur Tofu” on Hezbollah Tofu.

“Casual drinkers beware, cocktail nerds have a new way of ordering drinks in San Francisco. No longer satisfied with set menus or even with drink specials du soir, the true cocktailian now knows how to order custom-made drinks, and it's definitely the in thing to do. Don't believe me? Next time you go to a bar, take a listen. There will probably be at least one or two patrons who, after sampling a few drinks on the bar menu, will leave their next drink up to the bartender. They'll probably give clues like, "I'd like something with Bluecoat gin and ginger" or "I'm looking for something with a bitter edge, but not Campari-bitter," and then sit back to wait for their custom drink.
Stephanie Lucianovic on Bay Area Bites discusses the new kind of barfly.

“A year and a half ago I started talking to my seafood supplier here in Sydney to see if he knew anyone catching shark for the fish-and-chip industry in Victoria,” Gilmore says, ”because they use flake down there, and I thought if they were using the whole fish I could justify using the fin. No one was interested, but then I was speaking to my guys over in Western Australia at Mulataga, Chris and Dennis. They supply me with some marron and pearl meat, and get abalone and all sorts of great fish; their big business is exporting West Australian lobsters to China and all over the world. Anyway, they asked if I’d be interested in shark fin, and I said, tell me about it. …”
Quay chef Peter Gilmore on his controversial use of shark fin — on the Gourmet Traveller blog.

“Here is a step by step on how I use tuna spines as a great dish. … One chefs trash is another chefs dish.”
Chris on the sometimes confronting Offal Good. (If you can stomach it, take a look at this too.)

“Recently I read somewhere that they now have "sparkling sake" as an up-and-coming item, especially among young women (yes, like myself!) who usually steer clear of sake; now produced and sold by an increasing number of sake breweries, sparkling sake is fast finding its way in restaurant and household tables.”
Chika on the Japanese blog She Who Eats.

“Salty preserved lemons. … Once you’ve got the taste for this uniquely Moroccan specialty you’ll find yourself slipping a finely chopped chunk or two into almost anything. A tray of potatoes, roasted with wedges of red onion and a chopped red pepper or two then tossed with olive oil are lifted by a last-minute addition of the lemons. Fresh coriander, smoked paprika and cumin, a downright addictive combination, even love that salt when tossed with fresh young broad beans (double-peeled) and tender chickpeas for a salad doused in grassy olive oil and fresh lemon juice.”
Lucy on the Melbourne-based Nourish Me shares more good ideas.

More on Radio National

And more on Radio National: this week's Poetica (Saturday 3pm) looks at a subject close to my heart — gluttony. Promo says: "Following the trajectory of Berthold Brecht's famous lyric 'Food first, morals follow on' in the song 'What Keeps Mankind Alive', Gluttony is a graphic and highly sonic exploration of excessive appetites for food, love, drugs... and then its counterpoint, starvation." Podcasts of course, too.

On Air

Here's the link to yesterday's ABC Radio National Media Report on food and the media — presenter Antony Funnell quizzed me about blogging and what it means to me, and also talked to Maeve O'Meara and Philip Johnson of e'cco in Brisbane about television cooking shows, food reviews, the saturation media coverage of all things food-related, and the increasing public knowledge about food.

Recipe Scout 11

10 reasons to stay close to the kitchen this weekend:

1. Muhamarra (Turkish Walnut Garlic Dip) on Food Chair by Callipygia.
2. Swedish Fish Soup on Morsels & Musings.
3. Chocolate and Zucchini’s Grated Carrots and Beets.
4. Chickpea Hot Pot on 101 Cookbooks.
5. Claudia Roden’s Couscous with Spring Vegetables on BBC Food.
6. Neil Perry's Korean-Style Tuna Tartare on Gourmet Traveller.
7. The Shanghainese classic Dongpo-rou Pork on Bay Area Bites.
8. Stone Soup’s Classic Chocolate Cake.
9. Lemon Meringue Pie on Saveur.
10. Cook and Eat’s Mixed Berry Muffins.

Reasons to Be Cheerful

Daylight saving ended overnight Saturday in these parts, shutting down summer and its restorative evening light. Leave the office tonight in damp gloom after my least-favourite day of the magazine’s monthly cycle; the day when we proof-read the “positionals” — PDFs of the completed magazine. The third or fourth time I’ve read much of the text. Tedious beyond belief. Energy-sapping. Tragic that the day’s highlight is to swoop on typos, red pen in hand.
Old people on the train, trumpeting such. “Let the old people sit down,” one cackles, as I make way. Bloody hell — could that be me one day? Too long since I felt carefree.
Am needy for something hopeful, light-hearted, optimistic. So, for you and for me — 10 reasons to be cheerful. Feel free to supplement my list.

1. My ice-cream maker still works. Thought it had died but it remains faithful, churning out this fabulous strawberry sorbet for me on the weekend. Must remember always to have the mix chilled when it goes into the machine — that, I think, helped it do its important work. The recipe was from Ices: The Definitive Guide, by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir (Grub Street, 1995). 450g fresh strawberries, 375ml sugar syrup, juice of two lemons, strained, 1 egg white. Blend strawberries with a little sugar syrup. Strain away seeds if you prefer. Blend in remaining syrup and lemon juice. Stir. Chill. Churn. Ten minutes after you’ve started, add lightly whisked egg white. Am looking forward to making basil-flavoured lemon sorbet with the last of my summer basil, and lime sorbet.
2. An exquisite colour spectrum. When I converted the image above to a “GIF” file for use on a web page, the “colour table” in my Mac broke it down into the most exquisite colour spectrum — turquoises and aquamarines and pinks and oranges and reds. Confirms my thinking that reupholstering Aunty Amy's unsprunged, faded 1930s dining chairs (in 10 years when I can afford to do so) in a racy turquoise/aquamarine colour might just work with some of the existing red-hued interior features of my decor.
3. Lilies. With the weather as it is, the yet-to-open lilies I bought at Fox Studios Entertainment Quarter markets on the weekend might yet linger healthily for weeks.
4. A new crop of thoughtful, dynamic, expressive food writers might soon be born. Over three Saturdays in May, my friend John Newton will take a UTS-accredited food writing course at the NSW Writers’ Centre designed to show students a range of food writing and to introduce them to “the other branches of food writing that go beyond taste and flavour to politics and the environment”. (The far more interesting — and increasingly important — side of food writing.) Writers’ Centre members $330; non-members $360. No surprise that there’s a great recommended reading list, including Elizabeth David’s An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, Waverley Root’s The Food of France and Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking.
5. Early-morning starts. Now that the light has left the evening, but returned to the morning, I’ll be able to really seriously contemplate getting up to go to OzPaddle’s 5.50am kayak fitness training at Rose Bay. (On second thoughts, maybe that’s not a reason to feel cheerful…)
6. Blue cheese. The uninspiring-looking Kavil crispbread my mother bought last time she visited is still fresh and tastes just fine with a little St Augur blue.
7. Just a small cut. It’s only a little operation I have to have next week and the surgeon says it’s curable.
8. A mother's love. My loving, hoarding mother, who will arrive next week to serve me soup and mop my brow, continues in her op-shop quest to find me old cookbooks and her last find — The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook (I reckon it’s from the early ’50s, a very different beast to today’s WW offerings, and was under the direction of someone called “Leila C. Howard” — is that a clue for anyone?) — is a treasure. And thankfully I’m not relying on it to make ice-cream, as its “Homemade Ice-Cream” recipe calls for dry powdered milk, gelatine, butter and flavouring.
9. Creamy pasta. I fully intend to go to the kitchen now and cook myself my favourite comfort food — Marcella Hazan’s spaghetti carbonara — and I’m not even going to think about calories.
10. Eel. I’ve got smoked eel in the fridge.

•    Catch Radio National’s The Media Report on Thursday morning (8.30am), to hear me interviewed by host Antony Funnell for a program that “explores the symbiotic relationship between food and the media”. Podcasts too if you can’t be near your radio.

Recession Food

I made a stew tonight using chuck steak. Meanwhile, Americans are eating meatloaf... Writing on Bay Area Bites, Amy Sherman cites statistics from the online recipe site/food community, Allrecipes. She writes: "...with over 35 million unique visitors annually, the economic downturn might just be causing Americans to cut back on food spending. Traffic to recipe pages using low-cost ingredients, such as ground beef and pasta, nearly doubled over the past three months." In the Bronx, however, they do things a little differently: how's this Bronx-style food pyramid? (NB: A bodega is a corner store.)

The Packed Lunch

Stumbled on this fascinating New York Times blog post about "Smart Eating at Work". The passion and vehemence of the commenters responding to a list of nuts and brand-name granola and fibre bars, yoghurt and crackers, are as riveting as the post itself.
It's a subject that's on my mind: am smug that I took my lunch to work four days out of five this week to avoid dire cafeteria offerings — and limited lunch options in my office's neighbourhood. A leftover cannellini bean, roasted field mushroom, silverbeet and goats cheese salad of my own invention (a little odd to start with, didn't travel terribly well, I won't be sharing the "recipe", but at least I knew who had prepared it and what was in it); leftover meatloaf (now that was a fine thing; wish I could remember what I put in it); a chicken, avocado and um, mayonnaise sandwich on grain bread (can't go wrong with that...). And, of course, fruit and, in my desk drawer, roasted salted cashews (I guess if I'm serious about eating well I need to make a shift to unsalted raw ones?).
I'm on the hunt for more packed-lunch suggestions — throw them at me — and eagerly waiting for Lucy's promised ideas. The first one she shared with me was brilliant. Apart from the afternoon emissions.

A chickpea salad: canned chickpeas, drained, rinsed, drained. Chopped tomato. Chopped herbs (parsley, mint, basil). Grated parmesan. A little chilli. Lemon juice. Olive oil. Sea salt. Ground black pepper. Excellent.

Uni Obsession

Did anyone know that Ruth Reichl was in Australia recently? In the weekly Gourmet magazine email I receive she says she's just back from visiting us and "the food really is as wonderful as everyone says it is". Her pick of Melbourne restaurants was The Press Club (can't tell you how many times I have tried to get a booking there, unsuccessfully) and, in Sydney, Tetsuya's got the guernsey. She commented too, about "great wines all over", making special mention of "wonderful names like Ten Minutes by Tractor".
Meanwhile, an earlier Gourmet email alerted me to what I think must be the most wonderful concept yet: smoked uni (sea urchin roe). I've written of my love for uni before and am all aflutter about this hitherto unimagined pleasure.
Gourmet writer Joe DiStefano tells of his discovery of the smoked uni from Maine's Grindstone Neck handcrafted smoker here. He writes:

"The box was divided into the lighter orange-colored female roe and its darker, firmer male counterpart; both genders had just a whisper of sweet fruitwood smoke that rounded out some of those “oil tanker” notes. The female was supercreamy and had a melting texture, while the male was firmer and meatier. Everyone found it outstanding."

I must have some.

Soba So Good

A long-awaited Japan trip booked for June. Kyoto and Tokyo for eight days. (Bloody hell, still to give you the goods on Yunnan Province visit last year...hopelessly behind...) My desk is now groaning under the weight of clippings and books about restaurants, ryokans, shopping... Any thoughts you might have, please throw them my way. Would love to do some cooking classes during the trip, but suspect any decent ones will only be in Japanese. In my Googling for such, I came upon FXCuisine, a blog I wasn't familiar with (you might find owner François-Xavier's "About" page a little amusing) that has some fantastic pics and information about Tokyo's Tsukiji Soba Academy. I don't think I need to learn how to make homemade soba (as if...), but I would love some guidance in simple Japanese home-style cooking. Fiddled tonight with a recipe from Harumi's Japanese Home Cooking — her Soba Chirashi. Loved it, especially the "Mentsuyu sauce" (soy, mirin, dried bonito flakes), but such a long way from finessed in flavour.