The Elegant Sufficiency

The Knives Are Out

The benefits of having parents who are hoarders: when all else seems melancholy, there are amusing discoveries to be made in all corners of the house:

1. A bunch of old bone-handled knives … I’ll be buttering, slicing and cutting with the best of them … a couple of the knives are from "Harrison Bros & Howson – Cutlers to His Majesty". (There’s a discovery: should I be so surprised that someone who makes cutlery is a “cutler”?) Satisfyingly sturdy, workmanlike tools they are too, although hard to imagine they’d make much of a dent in anything.
2. The old tin measuring jug. If I didn’t know my mother’s foraging habits so well (she’s a woman with a lengthy and alarming history of expenditure at garage sales/yard sales, flea markets, auctions and charity shops), I could almost imagine that my grandmother had diligently measured out her flour and sugar in this battered number.
3. Paper patterns: see point 2 re mother’s alarming habits. There are hundreds of them stacked up in boxes around her craft area. You’ve got to love the “Go-Getter” children’s toys: among them, “Mod” and “A-Go-Go”.
4. The retro cocktail tumble. But bloody hell… attempted that recipe for a whisky sour and it was shocking. Don’t try this at home. (Further research reveals a need for egg white, sugar syrup, Angostura bitters and bourbon, rather than the Scotch I so ignorantly glugged out. Oh, and a stemmed cherry. As if you could forget the stemmed cherry.) Did you know that, in The Seven Year Itch, the publishing executive played by actor Tom Ewell tells Marilyn Monroe’s character, known as "The Girl" (they wouldn't be calling their female lead that these days): “I’m perfectly capable of fixing my own breakfast. As a matter of fact, I had two peanut butter sandwiches and two Whisky Sours.” …?

Cocktail Hours

With my very, very carefully planted geographical error in the previous post, I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. I’m really pleased to see that the Australians among you, including my dear father, are on the ball. Of course, Albury-Wodonga is not on the border of Victoria and Queensland. (For those further afield, it’s on the border of Victoria and New South Wales.)
Mmmm, well, seriously, I have no excuses for such a silly thing – wrote that when I was sober as a judge – but hope it gave you locals a good laugh at my expense!
Heaven knows what errors you might find in this missive: despite a desperate deadline for an article due first thing tomorrow morning, I’ve had an idle day out with a great old friend that drew to a lovely close an hour or so ago with a few glasses of West Australian riesling and a wicked, wicked pasta carbonara at Balzari. (Thank heavens the trainer with whom I have a date first thing tomorrow doesn’t read my blog.)
Really though, what else could we have done but have a nice glass or two of something after seeing the stylish, hilarious, champagne-sodden new Audrey Tautou film, Priceless (Hors de prix). It has been described as a contemporary doing-over of the Breakfast at Tiffany’s story, but its arch, mischievous character and its restrained sexiness (not to mention the lush, playground-of-the-rich-and-idle Riviera location) remind me more of something Carey Grant might have done, perhaps To Catch a Thief.

If I were a film reviewer (which perhaps you’ve quickly identified I’m not), I’d make it a priority to get my facts straight about the cocktail(s) that the initially hapless Jean (Gad Elmaleh) mixed for Irene (Tautou) on their first encounter. This is, after all, a film with an anti-heroine who decorates her messy chignon with those fabulous old paper cocktail umbrellas. This is important information. Yet, do you think Google has turned up one review for me that tells me what Jean mixed? It was pinkish, topped up with champagne, and he finished it with a starfruit slice+umbrella garnish, but damn, do you think I can find out what it was?
The best thing I’m going to be able to do for you is to share a little something I’ve long adored, something cheerful for a change, which is about as sexy and easy as Irene was in her divine little slip dresses and heels. The only difference? Irene was considerably more boozy than this little number.

Delia Smith's Strawberry Granita
(From Delia Smith's Summer Collection, BBC Books 1993)
Serves 8

1lb (450g) strawberries
6oz (175g) caster sugar
1 pint (570ml) water
3tbsp lemon juice

Hull strawberries, rinse in colander, drain well and dry on kitchen towel. Put strawberries in a food processor or blender and blend until it is a smooth puree. Stop the motor and add sugar. Blend briefly again. Add water and lemon juice and blend again, before pouring the mixture through a sieve into a bowl. Pour into a freezer container. Let the granita start to freeze around the edges for a couple of hours before pulling out and breaking the ice up with a fork. Return to the freezer. Repeat twice.

Bitter Sweet

I’m tired. Many hours today have been spent in an enclosed space with no windows and little air and with a keyboard glued to my fingers. Made bearable by a market escape at lunch and lovely local mussels for $4.50 a kilogram. To investigate—a new cookbook purchase, The Australian Women’s Weekly Slim: Low-Fat Eating for Life (2004), and a recipe for Thai-flavoured mussels.

I’m tired. So I didn’t question the recipe. But I should have. Thank heavens the little black mussels were sweet and plump and (almost) managed to shrug off the recipe's unneccessary additions. Along with palm sugar, ginger, garlic, chilli and lime juice, the ingredients list included two tablespoons of fish sauce and half a cup of fresh coriander leaves (for 2kg of mussels). I've since found more than a few recipes for mussels that call for fish sauce, but it seems to me a bizarre addition given that mussels often ooze more salt than is bearable. And the handful of unchopped coriander tossed in at the end was overwhelming. (I know some people who claim “coriander hangovers”. Others who loathe it, and tell waiters they’re allergic to it. For me, it has to be in the right place and right quantity.)

Nor did the recipe mention that the mussels need to be pulled out of the pot as they open. I hate to think of the result if someone who followed this recipe used those dreadful big fat frozen New Zealand Greenlips, were heavy on the fish sauce, and then did not know to pull the mussels out as they open to avoid them toughening up. An apology of a recipe, which is a pity coming from the mass-market WW brand, because my hunch is that many people are scared of cooking mussels, yet they're one of the most sensational seafoods—brilliant flavour, lush texture, dead simple to prepare and invariably dirt cheap. Buy the small black ones if you're lucky enough to be able to get them when they're hours out of the water, treat them minimally and they're a triumph.

Sadly, tonight's dinner wasn't a triumph. I'm going to see what David Thompson has to say on the subject of Thai mussels and pour myself another Limoncello on the rocks (syrupy as it is, still so easy to down, and its consumption is an indication of how bare my bar is). It has helped me recover from the day and the fish sauce. Even better, I’ve just remembered a great cocktail recipe using the liqueur that was created by Melbourne’s Becco restaurant.

 

The Becco Bitter Lemon

25ml Campari

25ml Limoncello

1 lime, cut into a large dice (maybe 8 pieces)

ice, crushed

5ml lemon cordial (I like Schweppes)

tonic water

Shake all ingredients except tonic water together in a cocktail shaker. Pour into a tall glass and top up with tonic water. (If you share my love for the shape of the classic cocktail glass, there's no reason I can think of not to use one.) Serves 1.