The Elegant Sufficiency

A Tribute to my Father

The last meal my father enjoyed was lemon delicious. On a humid, mid-January day he came home from Noosa hospital for lunch, lugging with him a Niki T34 Syringe Driver connected to his abdomen and the knowledge that it might be the last day he would sit on his deck and look at the ocean.
The syringe driver, or pump, which Daddy carried in a supermarket green-bag during his visit home, delivered an unforgiving cocktail of morphine, Maxolon (for nausea) and Haloperidol (an anti-delirium medication) through sub-cutaneous needles. “Sub-cut”, the expression that became so familiar to us through his last dreadful days, left his distended belly horrifyingly stained with blue-purple bruises.
But those bruises were the least and most superficial of his problems. His kidneys were failing; finally, after a four-year battle with prostate cancer, a series of doctors had told us that there were no options left, and Daddy’s advanced health directive, insisting that there should be no attempts to prolong his life, nor resuscitate him, was soon to be invoked.
We talk idly about last meals; food sections glibly ask celebrity chefs what they’d eat for their last meal; in Hollywood movies, prisoners always get the chance to nominate one … deep-dish supreme pizzas, double cheeseburgers followed by cherry cheesecake, fried chicken (I promise you, there is a website that will give you this information). But if you want to really enjoy a last meal when you know your hours are numbered, you would be advised not to let your kidneys fail, nor carry a pump delivering such a horrid drug combination into your bloodstream.
A few hours after Daddy returned to the hospital from his lunch on the deck, after wolfing down his favourite pudding, he threw it up. He threw up, violently, for the next week even though he ate nothing more than drops of clear soup and flat lemonade. When he was first diagnosed with cancer, I had cooked for him with a degree of desperation. The tofu, the salmon, the broccoli, the tomatoes, the pomegranate juice — all those prescribed ingredients that I’d urged evangelically that he eat — none mattered anymore. The lemon cakes and orange-marmelade cakes and chocolate puddings that I’d cooked to comfort him (and, most likely, me) … now they were useless too.
On Saturday, January 16, my father, my best friend, went into a coma. Eight days later, about 9pm on January 24, Daddy died. 

And how are we doing, my mother, brother and I? We are getting out of bed and somehow placing one foot in front of the other. Various experts have told us what to expect — grief is a journey, they say. Others have drawn Venn diagrams to explain the intersection of emotions that we might feel at this time. But I feel as though my emotions are as blocked as my father’s kidneys were. An explosion must be coming and it won’t be pretty.
But for now, I want to tell you about my very special father. I want to share the eulogy I managed to give for him at what was a beautiful ceremony celebrating his life. I want you to read to the end and hear his message which, I’m proud to say, was celebrated in the Queensland Parliament on Tuesday, February 9 in a lengthy condolence motion, as well as in the Senate in a speech by Queensland Senator Claire Moore who attended the funeral as a representative of the Rudd Government. And my only regret is that the joys of lemon delicious as a last meal weren't debated in the Upper House of the Australian Parliament.

Peter Wood, A Love Story

I’d like to tell you a great love story. It’s the swinging 60s. London. Carnaby Street, the Rolling Stones, free love, the Summer of Love, the Sexual Revolution, Sex and the Single Girl. Girls’ skirts are getting shorter, boys are chasing those girls with ever-increasing ardour.
Over the past few years, Daddy wrote dozens of stories for me about his life and, in one of those stories, he mapped out his love life. You might like to hear of his playboy escapades, of bikini-clad Bardot-esque young women draped over him from Brighton to Biarritz, of the broken hearts strewn in his wake.
I’m afraid, though, I can’t tell you that story. You see, in the tale about his love life that Daddy wrote for me, he announces a shocking truth. 

Vintage Mags 1: Normal Teens Watch Horror Movies

I've mentioned my parents' obsessive-compulsive hoarding issues here, here and here... (Happy Mother's Day Mum!). And here, more evidence of the problem.

Found in the bottom of a silverfish-infested box of old Women's Weeklies from the '30s and '40s that they must have picked up at an auction years ago. I'm keeping all the old Weeklies, but think this one deserves a home that will love it more than I can. (Ebay listing here.) Actually, I'm starting to struggle with the idea of parting with it (Trying to throw off genetically inherited hoarding tendencies by shifting out as much stuff as I shift in). But perhaps no one will buy it... (can you delist ebay items?) ...

Parents of 21st Century teenagers might wish that horror movies were all they had to contend with. Meanwhile, they don't make advertising copywriters like this anymore... Gaultier's inspiration for Madonna's iconic conical bra becomes clear. And the text that may be too small for you to read: "The unique Floating Action bra... the bra that stays in place all day giving you perfect comfort. The secret's in the tangent straps — completely tension free! They hold up the whole bra not just the cups ... and there is no pressure on your shoulders. That's why Floating Action is the favourite of American Women."

And this one... "This super player ... comes in gay colours that will go with the furnishings in your 'den'." I want one! A den, that is...

And ladies, do make sure not to let yourselves go...

A Late Livestrong Submission

Long past deadline, but there you go, I’m good at that. You want excuses? Where do I start? Still, hope Barbara at Winos and Foodies might give me some credit for my efforts.
This post is a contribution to her annual A Taste of Yellow blogging event in support of Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Day on May 13, an initiative to raise awareness and funds for the cancer fight. (You can donate here to my chosen cancer charity, the Mater Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, which is doing some really amazing work to find a prostate cancer vaccine.) 
Barbara's A Taste of Yellow demands of its participants that they cook and photograph something yellow with a yellow Livestrong band in the photograph somehow. “Please join me again as we remember those loved ones who are no longer with us, support those still fighting and celebrate with those who have won the fight,” Barbara wrote on her blog when she launched the 2008 Taste of Yellow a month or so back.
Dad is very firmly still with us and, if I have my way, he’s not going anywhere soon. (Although, if he were to eat this as I have done today — straight out of the jar — a heart attack would get him before the prostate cancer does.)
Well, what else are you to do with very very runny mandarin-lemon curd but slather it on sourdough toast as you would honey?
One of my roles at work is to be the editor of Sean Moran, of Sean's Panaroma. The lovely Sean writes a monthly column for us called “Fresh”: a seasonal ingredient, how to select it and store it, and what to do with that ingredient. Next column coming up in our June edition is about mandarins and one of Sean’s recipes is for mandarin curd. Loved the idea, thought it might be perfect for A Taste of Yellow.
Pity though, that I have a sad history of wrecking anything involving cooking eggs slowly into a dish. Custard, crème brulee — you name it, I mess them up. Impatience, incompetence — who knows? (Have been saving up the story of making crème brulee for the Belgian countess during one of my cooking jobs after finishing a Le Cordon Bleu course: my crème brulee was as eccentric as she was. But really, a temper tantrum over a curdled crème brulee? For heaven’s sake!)
Couldn’t get the ferocious, crazy Countess de la Laing out of my brain as I embarked on my mandarin curd. You’ll have to wait for the next the(sydney)magazine for Sean’s recipe, but suffice to say that, when my egg yolks very deliberately started to solidify in my butter-sugar-juice mixture, I could feel the countess’s wrath descending all over again.
Remedial measures were called for. The saucepan off the heat; the mixture strained to remove the cooked bits; a new egg yolk deployed in the now cooler mixture to compensate for the egg lost; back to the stove. Well, I wasn’t going to waste all that mandarin zest. Do you know how hard it is to zest a mandarin?
Of course, it was never going to be perfect, was it? One egg yolk wasn’t going to do the trick, and eventually, reluctantly, I admitted defeat, took it off the heat, poured the runny mixture into jars.
Sean’s recipe wasn’t at fault — my vagueness and impatience were the problem. The tangy, two-citrus flavour is divine and I’ll be attempting the recipe again soon, but in the meantime, I just can’t keep away from that jar in the fridge.

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.

The Sleepover

She's soundly asleep, teddy one side, dolly the other. I'm completely exhausted after play, park, catering and endless toileting. (Simply can't understand how anyone has the energy to do parenting permanently.) I gave her meatballs and spaghetti: onion, garlic, mushrooms and prosciutto fried 'til soft; that then mixed with grated carrot (insert vegetable wherever possible — isn't that what you do?), an egg, beef mince, pepper, grated nutmeg, a little chopped tomato left over from lunch, the last of some fontina and manchego, grated. All rolled into tidy little balls. Fried. Mini grissini sticks to keep her quite while I finished off — "needs hummus," she announced. All of two years and one month she is. Transfixed by the Wiggles. Batons of zucchini that she guzzled. Less enthusiastic about the beans and sugar-snap peas. She didn't seem to notice that there wasn't much of a sauce with her moist-as-anything meatballs and spaghetti ... that her aunt had neglected to stock up on canned tomatoes (how does that happen?) ... and that the homemade tomato relish really wasn't much of a substitute. The Sara Lee Absolutely Boysenberry a hit. There's still two-thirds of a tub of it left. Good thing my self-conceived, no-alcohol (19 days now) and now no-bread diet doesn't make mention of icecream.

Fit for a Princess

I may be responsible for preparing a two-year-old's dinner tomorrow night and my concerns about whether she'll sniff at what I serve her, as she did last time, have not been assuaged by stumbling on this absurd Guardian article about feeding fussy children. I want the little princess to want to come back, but I'm as likely to make her fresh pasta as I am to serve her truffles and foie gras and Krug. More on this Guardian blog on the subject, but I still don't have a clue what I'll cook her... ideas please!?

Who Needs a Cookbook?

This post could go in one of several directions.
1. It could explore my timid return to the fish markets at Pyrmont.
2. It could talk about the fact that, against all expectations, salted little capers have use-by dates.
3. It could be yet another grumble about the profoundly dissatisfying state of 21st century tomatoes.
4. Or, it could be an exposition on my belief that the century of the recipe book is over.
(It could even be an album review: Listening, and loving, right now, Missy Higgins’s 2007, On a Clear Night, especially the track Sugarcane. On to fourth replay now.)
But to Point 1: Ventured back to Pyrmont during my lunch hour last week. Discovered a reasonable sushi train with fabulous unagi (grilled eel) sushi. At another outlet, an $11 takeaway container of uni (sea urchin roe). I’m going back for that. I'm helpless in the face of it. Fled De Costi Seafoods after being asked, for a 10th time by yet another sales assistant, whether I needed help. Although very dazzled by their range of squid/calamari/cuttlefish/octopus.
Finally settled on a whole flounder at, I think, Peter’s Seafoods. It was caught in New Zealand waters, and that bothers me, but I set my environmental/air miles concerns to one side, as I wanted something on the bone, not a fillet, to feed one, and that seemed the best option.
No idea what to do with a whole flounder but I’m finding my confidence with fish. Heat+Flesh=Result. I’m looking at the thickness of the fillet or the size of the fish and drawing logical conclusions. That worked on Christmas Day with a whole ocean trout and, last night, like a dream, with my flounder.
Which leads to Points 2 and 3, which can be dealt with quickly. Pulling a little plastic container of capers out of the pantry — Zuccato Capperi Al Sale (product of Italy), it was clear pretty quickly that they don’t last forever, as perhaps I think I imagined they might. Hard little pellets they were, although nothing a little water couldn’t fix. And I ignored the use-by date. What? 2006? That couldn’t possibly be right! I can’t possibly be turning into my mother?!
As for the tomatoes. … well, what more needs to be said. Seems to me that, in this city, unless you have the time to travel half way across town to an overpriced fruit and vegetable merchant, or you’re a restaurant chef with access to the best suppliers, you’ll struggle to find a decent tomato. I’m increasingly using cherry tomatoes, or those little grape tomatoes, as I did with my flounder. Perhaps the tomato story is the same in every city?
Point 4 though, is the one worth spending some time on.  My confidence with fish may be increasing, but I still needed some inspiration. And, on the day I came home with a whole flounder, poor sad ugly little thing it was, my books were still in boxes, waiting for new shelves to be delivered. In any case, it would have taken me half an hour or more to wade through umpteen book indexes looking for flounder ideas. Two minutes on Google turned this up (but I really didn’t need the butter); three minutes and I’d come upon this — Michael Lomonaco of Porter House New York demonstrating a recipe for whole roasted flounder (he calls it “fluke”) with caper and tomato dressing (I guess the olive oil could do as much damage?).
Took me about 10 minutes to pull it all together with a little green salad at the side. Just brilliant. And the fish was superb, coming away from the bone without a murmur.
Given the resources online — especially those from many of you — and given my already considerable collection of food books, and clipped recipes, it’s a rare cookbook that entices me enough to spend money these days. It needs to offer something very special, a very clear point of difference: I’d hoped to find it in Kylie Kwong’s latest, My China, but was disappointed by the lightweight text. Movida: Spanish Culinary Adventures has caught my interest more; partly because I love the restaurant, partly because the recipes are so very appealing and accessible, partly because each recipe is prefaced with a small introduction that explains an element of the dish, or an associated tradition or memory. Beyond Nose to Tail, by British chef Fergus Henderson, has that X factor thanks to its considerable eccentricity and humour (“toss with conviction” is the suggestion in one recipe). And, offal lover that I am, it’s impossible not to be persuaded by recipes such as Confit Pig’s Cheek and Dandelion, and Chicken and Ox Tongue Pie.
But all that said, I find it fairly easy these days to avoid cookbook purchases. Am I the only one to feel this way? What new releases have lured you to part with $$?
Meanwhile, I’d love to be in a position to build on my semi-regular "Recipe Scout" — and to find a way to more effectively search it. I’m working on it.

Happy New Year. And It Will Be.

Bloody hell. Too long between posts, and apologies for the lack of Christmas and New Year’s cheer in my last rant. I have to say, it’s a time of year that, if you ask me, is vastly overrated. A high-pressure system waiting to explode.
On the eve of Christmas Eve I nearly belted a couple of carollers in a food court. Their’s would have been a silent night indeed if I’d let my bad temper out of the bag.
On Christmas Eve, as I have previously ranted, I joined the unseemly, gluttonous riot at the seafood markets.
On Boxing Day I discovered one of the city’s most exquisite and uncrowded beaches, Lady Bay Beach (or Lady Jane Beach) near Watsons Bay, a beach I should like to spend a great deal of time on — but for the leathery, wobbly naked men dangling their willies left, right and centre. The miserable, outrageously overpriced fish and chips my parents and I had at the Palace Hotel beer garden after our walk were not that much less off-putting.
On New Year’s Eve I collapsed with exhaustion and was in bed by 9.
On New Year’s Day I discovered the extent of my Christmas over-spending. I’ll be discovering it for some months to come.
But then there was Christmas Day. The first I’ve hosted. A palm tree with a few last-minute red and silver balls subbed in for an elaborately decorated conifer. A corked bottle of Billecart-Salmon laughed off with some good Australian riesling. A chaotic, rebelliously untraditional series of dishes through the day (my brother’s latest favourite recipe — his wonderful stuffed and fried zucchini flowers; a huge bowl of prawns with my mother’s special dressing; a whole baked ocean trout; salads; Aunt Mabel's Christmas pudding; my sister-in-law’s wicked Cherry-Ripe-style slice). Afternoon naps for all (but me toiling in the kitchen). A two-year-old niece who especially loved her aunt’s present: a miniature baking set of quiche pan, rolling pin and cookie cutters. A new nephew who nestled for an age in his grandfather’s arms.
And then there was New Year’s Day. A picnic in a park overlooking the Tasman Sea. My parents’ last day in town before heading home. A fine bottle of Billecart-Salmon and barbecued chicken torn off with our fingers and stuffed into white rolls with aioli. A grandfather walking hand-in-hand towards the sea with his granddaughter. ‘Pa,’ she calls him, really the designated term for her other grandfather, but no one’s arguing that point with her. And next year, the nephew will be getting to know more about him than simply the warmth of his heart.

And so to 2008: I hope to be here this year often — with thoughts, recipes, photographs, rants, whatever. I’ll do my best to be here often because doing this gives me nourishment I could never have imagined it would. But for me, it’s going to be a big, busier year and I hope you’ll keep stopping by to check up on me if I'm silent for a while.
As for you — I hope 2008 is your finest, rich with family and friendships, for those are the most important things, and full of triumphs large and small, stimulation and challenges, and good health, good deeds and, of course, good food.

A Dimple in His Chin

21.43, December 8, 2007. A little blond boy with a dimple in his chin is born in the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, Sydney, Australia. Name: Finn. Son for my brother, grandson for my parents, brother for my two-year-old niece. The niece who barely ate any of the dinner I so lovingly cooked for her tonight, despite carefully disguised vegetables in a very fine sauce. I'm scared she might starve overnight and have now checked on her angelic sleep five times. A novice aunt manning the fort.

Apron Strings

Staying with my parents in Queensland briefly, before the frenzy of my move to Sydney. Muddling through their chaos, checking their affairs are in order, helping Mum tackle the cleaning she seems to be neglecting (she refuses to get a cleaner), getting in a state about my Dad’s latest visit to the oncologist, cooking a dinner for my mother’s friends — “We never see anyone,” she complains. “Your father would have me a hermit.” (Duck rice paper rolls, roast Spanish lamb, brilliant fragrant rice, salads, marmalade steamed pudding … some recipes to share soon … sun had gone down by the time the dishes were ready, so no photography, and besides, I had got myself in a slightly panicked muddle in the kitchen by that stage.)
My mother’s cluttering, hoarding eccentricities are everywhere. My Dad’s anxieties and nervous tics emerge as I try to organise, tidy, sort. Perhaps I should just let them be and not nag and pester and try to organise.
Through the stress though, at least they still give me the odd laugh.
Quote from my Dad as I carry a couple of rolls of toilet paper up the stairs to the guest bathroom: “You’re not in China now.”
Quote from my Mum as she watches The Einstein Factor, an Australian quiz show where the “special subject” of one contestant is “Australian Prime Ministers”: “Your Grandmother’s aunt wanted to marry Billy Hughes (the Australian Labor Prime Minister who split from the Labor Party over the issue of conscription during World War I). But her father said he was an umbrella maker and would never amount to anything.”
And I should not be so critical of my mother’s hoarding tendencies: in the past few weeks in Melbourne, as I have tried to sort and ruthlessly discard in preparation for what no doubt will be a much smaller Sydney apartment, I have struck my own eccentric hoarding behaviour.

Immortalising an Apron

This apron for example. A lovely thing. Mum thinks my Great Aunt Amy embroidered it — clearly in the ’30s, judging by its style. But it’s half finished, and soiled terribly. I’m wondering what to do with it. I’d even clipped a page from some DIY magazine, which suggested I “immortalise the uniform from your first after-school job” in a frame.
I tried to arrange the apron as though it were in a frame. It looked stupid. I’ve given up on the idea. But how could I throw such a lovely thing out? Any ideas what to do with it?
And I’ve been trying to reduce a pile of old recipes. Since my early 20s I have been collecting recipes. For a long time, I glued every one I fancied onto a piece of paper, slipped the paper into a plastic sleeve and put the sleeve in a ring-bound folder. A waste of time really, as most recipes never got cooked and now, looking at them, they’re awfully out-of-date. But going through the ring-bound folders in the past couple of weeks has been as revealing as poring through a photo album. Markers of my life.
So many recipes from my Mum, probably the first recipes I ever was aware of, ever collected: Her pork sparerib recipe (with five-spice powder and marmalade and which I’m very keen to try now); her salmon log (with canned salmon and cream cheese, which I’m not so keen to put to the test); her chicken liver pate (which might be OK with some adjustments); her green goddess dip (cottage cheese, anchovy paste, Worcestershire sauce etc — might be good, even today, with crudités); her cucumbers in sour cream (she served them as a sambal every time she cooked one of her great curries); her marinated lamb kebabs (love these — olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, ginger, cumin, parsley); and her steak Diane (I cooked this, along with prawn cocktail and lemon crepes, for my first dinner party when I was a third-year university student living in the most ramshackle share house.)
Then there are the recipes that came from my university girlfriends who shared my interest in “food”. Bizarrely, a “cheese soup” (basically, a vegetable soup with some matured cheddar cheese tossed in) from my friend Toni, and Oysters Czarina from my friend Melissa.

The Start of a Food Writing Career

Recipes from the first cooking demonstration I went to are in the pile: as a fledgling food writer, I watched Cherry Ripe, the Australian food writer who is much quieter these days, make smoked salmon and avocado parcels and a pasta dish: she told her audience that you should cook pasta in water bubbling “like Rossini”. Even now, l barbiere di Siviglia pops into my head when I cook pasta.)
Then, burdening my ring-bound folders of recipes, are the umpteen dishes with cream sauces (tarragon cream chicken, veal and herb cream sauce, camembert chicken in tomato basil sauce, chicken sautéed with basil cream sauce) and hot avocado dishes (chicken with smoked salmon and avocado). Did I really cut all these recipes out thinking they might be good?
And my personal history as seen in pages of recipes continues: like all good young Australians, I crossed the world to live for a couple of years in London and misbehave. Perhaps I didn’t misbehave as much as many … I kept on clipping recipes, and then I did a Cordon Bleu course.
That ring-binder has Sophie Grigson recipes clipped from the Evening Standard (fresh tuna patties, and pasta with rich mushroom sauce) and Alastair Little recipes from some weekend magazine (grilled mackerel teriyaki with Japanese rice). Grigson, daughter of the famous Jane, moved her column, in an extended form, to The Independent, where I worked as a sub-editor; I still have a clipping of the junior Grigson’s Independent column on guinea fowl, with recipes including pot-roast guinea fowl with onions and thyme, poached guinea fowl with basil and tomato vinaigrette, and guinea fowl cooked with green peppercorns. Never cooked one of them.
And I remember a cooking writer at The Independent called Emily Green (I think), who went through a stage of baking like crazy and bringing the product of her oven into the newsroom. So, written on Independent letterhead (an eagle coming in to land with a newspaper in its claws), are her recipes for bacon bread and white bread and in my head, memories of the sub-editing hoards gathering around her baked offerings on a spare desk. (Memories also, of the most rigorous standards of writing and editing.)
Then there are the recipes collected during my time “studying” at Le Cordon Bleu: lots of reductions and sauces and vinaigrettes and so forth, and some recipes from guest chefs who visited the school, including the exec chef from the Ritz Hotel who cooked sea bass with potato scales and crab salad Antoinette.
I’m not struggling in the least with my decision to throw 99.9% of my recipe binder’s clippings into the recycling bin with the Saturday papers, but Great Aunt Amy’s half-embroidered apron? That’s a different story. What am I going to do with it?

Hope in a Pomegranate

I’m expecting a great deal of these gleaming fruity jewels.
So, apparently, did Catherine of Aragon. The first wife of King Henry VIII used the pomegranate, a symbol of love and fertility, as an emblem in her coat of arms. (You won’t find this on a wedding registry list: a suit of armour engraved with roses and pomegranates was given to the 17-year-old Henry by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian on the occasion of the couple’s wedding.)
As with all of the king’s wives, things didn’t quite go to plan. Poor Catherine. Her first child, born in 1510, was a stillborn daughter. A year later, she gave birth to a baby boy, Prince Henry. Fifty-two days later, after premature celebrations and revelry across the kingdom, he was dead. There was a miscarriage, then the birth of another boy who lived only a short time. So much tragedy for a mother before some joy; in 1516, the weary Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Mary I, a more robust child.**
But, for all the symbolism of Catherine’s pomegranate-encrusted coat of arms, there was no male heir for the lusty Henry and his eye had started to wander. We all know what happened to wives who displeased King Henry VIII: Catherine lived out her days in a dank castle and apparently prayed a lot.
A fat lot of good pomegranates were for the humble and loyal Queen.

I’m hoping that pomegranates will serve me, I mean my father, better.
I spent some time this week on the phone, attempting to track down a supplier of organic pomegranate juice (not concentrate) close to the town where my parents live.
Studies have apparently found that pomegranate juice has strong prostate-cancer-fighting properties. In mice, at least.
I’m praying as much as the jilted Catherine did that if my Dad drinks a glass of pomegranate juice every day it might help stave off the progression of his cancer. There was a bad result last week: a test to measure the levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in his body showed that it’s increasing and at an alarmingly fast rate.
I understand now why some cancer sufferers and their families go to any lengths, put their faith in snake-oil salesmen and fundamentalist preachers, in Taoist Ki Energy Healing and Spiritual Cancer Healing, in Miracles of Inner Healing and Emotional Healing. You do anything, grasp at anything, in the hope that it will have an effect. And all the while, your insides churn and your brain runs in agonising directions because you know that there’s another test result to come in a couple of months, or less, and then another after that, and on, and on. And all the pomegranates in the world might not change a thing.

**Dad: have I got my history right? And are you drinking your pomegranate juice? Did you go to the gym today? Are you eating enough tofu and salmon and broccoli? Is Mum looking after you?

Eating Sushi in Pregnancy

A very important, much-loved person in my life is pregnant right now, so this New York Times article grabbed my attention. Only a week or so back when I was visiting her in Sydney she mentioned that she'd thought of planning a lunch at her favourite sushi restaurant while I was in town. And then remembered that, in her condition, it wasn't such a great idea. If only she'd read this article first.

Hometown Reflections

Asked about my hometown, Toowoomba, my glib reply is that it's the Australian capital of evangelical Christian churches and incest. The Deep South of Australia's north.
There are no shortage of places to go in Toowoomba on a Sunday if you like to wave your arms in the air and submit to healing hands: I recall attending one such service as a cadet reporter on the local newspaper assigned to interview a visiting preacher. I was about as horrified by the spectacle as I was by some of the car crashes I was sent to cover. In the late '80s, the right-wing Logos Foundation moved its headquarters to town (the church's charismatic pastor was eventually felled by a delicious adultery scandal) and more recently and perhaps more famously, the magnificently named Magnificat Meal Movement made the hamlet of Helidon, just outside Toowoomba, home. (The founder of MMM also had her problems: a Catholic bishop who labelled the movement a 'cult' and a loquacious ex-husband who described her as a 'fake' and whose mutterings about a 'doomsday burning' resulted in the MMM headquarters being surrounded by police and journalists on the 9th of September, 1999. Nothing happened.)
In my days in the offices of The Toowoomba Chronicle (where computers had just started to take over and 'compositors' — formerly printers — waxed the backs of bromide paper bearing the typeset articles before sticking them to art board), endless press releases whirred and clacked their way out of the wire machine announcing everything from the movements of local members of parliament, to charity fundraisers, local sports fixture results and government statistics showing Toowoomba's alarmingly high incest rates. I don't know whether the figures still rate among the nation's highest, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I have been thinking about my hometown because it has again made national headlines. This time, two baby brothers, four and 18 months, are dead. The crime scene, a house in an area on the wrong side of the tracks. Not the first time Toowoomba has been in the headlines for such a terrible thing.

Tacos and Chinese Takeout
Segueing to another, lighter topic: one thing Toowoomba has never made headline news for is its food (except perhaps for Weis's restaurant, famous for its all-you-can-eat seafood smorgasbord, the place for special celebrations and, oddly, where I first tried frogs' legs). Mum always talked about opening a restaurant in the town, a curry restaurant (early in her married life she found a couple of very authentic Indian cookbooks which still inform her cooking — and her musty cluttered pantry); I wonder if her musings about such a business venture were not a reaction to our occasional meals at the Mexican Cantina in Margaret Street. Or takeout from the Westlake Chinese Restaurant.
My collection of vintage cookbooks (which I can largely thank Mum's op-shop-foraging habit for) includes two Toowoomba "cookbooks", one featuring "Chronicle Prize Winning Recipes in conjunction with the Royal Agricultural Society and Toowoomba Master Butchers", the other a booklet "compiled by the Parent-Teacher Association, St Stephen's Presbyterian Church Toowoomba." Neither is going to enhance the town's food reputation, but still, they offer a fascinating snapshot into a time and a place.
Bit hard to work out the booklets' exact ages — nothing so sensible as a date appears on either — but from the Chronicle cover's minty-green kitchen with its bakelite canisters, Sunbeam Mixmaster and perfectly coiffed housewife (above), you'd have to think it was the late '50s or early '60s. Can you imagine how very chic that woman and her kitchen must have seemed in a provincial Australian town of that era? And how chic the food must have looked — the first recipe in the book is Spiced Pork Chops with Prune Filled Apple Rings (from Mrs G. Smiles, Dalby). But while the prize-winning housewives whose recipes appear in the book might have been dabbling with some new and exotic flavours (I wonder what the Vue de Monde chefs would make of Lamb Cutlets with Bananas, or Tornado a la Roseni), there are some markers here of a dying era. The booklet's preface lists four "classes" in the cooking competition, the last being "Meat Recipe for a Breakfast for 4".  It wasn't unusual for my brother and I to get lamb chops for breakfast (Mum insisted we have a full cooked breakfast every day) and in Australian rural areas mixed-grill breakfasts were the norm, but how many Australians these days sit down to a meaty breakfast routinely?

Personal Reference Points
The other booklet from the St Stephen's Parent-Teacher Association (price 2/6) strikes me as being a fair bit older. On the inside cover is an ad for a local motor dealer, Gordon Motors, singing the virtues of Humber Hawks, Snipes and Pullmans and "the new Hillman Minx" — "inspect and drive 'the world's most successful light car' claimed to be the greatest achievement in design and construction". I'm wondering if the booklet isn't from the early '30s, which is when the Minx seems to have been first released; the fact that telephone numbers in the ads are only two, three or four digits, and the language, too, suggest that vintage. (In an ad for W.A. Noble & Gegg Pharmaceutical and Veterinary Chemists: "the pharmacist has a 'key to a cabinet' in which he guards stocks of narcotic drugs — opium, morphine, codein (sic), and others — prescribed by Doctor to provide relief from torments of insufferable pain.")
There are more personal reference points for me in this seemingly commonplace cooking booklet: in an ad for The Bootery ("Footwear for the Family"), which I'm sure is where my mother bought our sensible school shoes decades on; in another for T.S. Burstow ("Furniture and Furnishings" and "Funeral Directors"), the funeral home that buried my grandmothers; F.W. Howard Newsagent, Stationer and Bookseller — I'm sure that's where I picked up copies of Rolling Stone magazine and, later as my interests shifted, Vogue Entertaining and Travel.
There's one for Pigott & Co. ("The City Emporiums"), where my Dad's cousin worked and where my brother only last weekend claimed he had a tantrum over a lost toy car; John McKinney (Toowoomba's Quality Store), where Mum bought me my first string of pearls (which I later lost at a rock concert: I guess I wasn't much of a rock chick); and the booklet was printed by Downs Printing Company, which I think is where my father had most of his election material — leaflets, how-to-vote cards — printed.

Chokos and a Cookie Recipe
And the recipes in the St Stephen's Parent-Teacher Association booklet? Perhaps most evocative for me are those using what Australians call chokos. (Apparently, the Spanish name for this vegetable is chayote.) A choko vine suffocated the leaning wooden fence separating my Nana's driveway where she parked her little green VW Beetle, from the next-door neighbour's place. I remember grumbling when Mum served chokos up at dinner, although I wasn't so unhappy when they were younger and had delicate, sweet seeds in their centre which were great drenched in butter and pepper. I haven't seen a choko in a market or grocer for such a long time; if I could find some, I might be tempted to try out the booklet's Choko and Pineapple Jam or one of two plain Choko jam recipes it offers.
Extraordinary how such a little thing can bring back such a flood of memories and how it can say so much about the continuum of small-town life. Sadly though, it hasn't inspired me to rush into the kitchen. The recipes are largely of their time (Savoury Mutton, Mock Chicken, Potted Rump Steak, Raspberry Tapioca) and I had to comb them a few times before I found one that appealed. Under "Special Lard Recipes" I came upon a recipe for some spiced Oatmeal Cookies. Substituting butter for the lard, I found an antidote to the less savoury side of my hometown.

Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup cake flour (I assumed plain flour)
1tsp baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
½ tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
¼ tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp allspice
½ cup sugar
1/3 cup lard (I used butter)
3tbsp milk
1 egg
½ cup chopped nuts (I used a mixture of walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds)
½ cup raisins
1 cup dry rolled oats

Sift flour once, measure, add baking powder, salt and spices, and sift together three times.
Cream sugar and butter. Add 1tbsp of the milk and the egg and beat well. Add nuts, raisins, rolled oats and the remaining milk and stir. Add the flour and stir well. Drop by teaspoonfuls on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 10-12 minutes.
Allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

History Lessons

Yes, no doubt about it, my father is fabulous. I’m glad you agree! I’m just so pleased I started to coax him to write his stories down for me a couple of years ago. It has been valuable for so many reasons and he has produced some ace anecdotes, ranging from his first days as a schoolteacher in a country town, to his stint as an altar boy. He tells me he’s running out of tales but I simply don’t believe him and I’ll keep pestering him until he produces them (he’s S-E-V-E-N-T-Y O-N-E for heaven’s sake ... the man has threescore years and ten's worth of tales!). I want to get my mother’s stories down too, although she’s more interested in knitting and following the racing form guide than writing, so that will require a bit more work on my part.
Coincidentally, this week I stumbled on this reference on my new-favourite-blog, BuzzMachine, by Jeff Jervis, a man with a mouthful of a title (associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism). “Let’s turn the cameras on our friends and family and see what learning comes out of it,” says Jervis, blogging about what he calls “citizen historians”.
I just wish that my parents had thought to assail their parents with a notebook and pencil.

A Maiden Voyage

More deadlines, head down, trying to map out umpteen projects for the remainder of the year. So I’m going to let my father take the floor again for this post, in which he reminisces about his voyage from Australia to England in the days when air travel was out of the reach of most travellers. And a wonderful excuse to show you these glorious, glorious illustrations and old menus.

A Maiden Voyage
by Peter Wood

I was very posh. There I was in Dad’s 1930s’ dinner suit, joining other dinner-suited gentlemen and elegant women in evening finery in the first-class dining room on the P&O liner S.S. Canberra en route from Sydney to Southampton via the Suez Canal in the early ’60s.
Friends more experienced in overseas travel than I had persuaded me to sail on what was called a P&O “boomerang” fare that allowed a reduced first-class fare in the off-season. Tourist class, where I’m sure I would have felt more comfortable, was for the hoi polloi. First class was very, very posh. Thank goodness Mum had taught me respectable table manners.
But my wardrobe was not equipped for such a passage — it was very meagre and unfashionable and P&O stipulated formal dress for first-class passengers in the dining room. I remembered Dad’s dinner suit with its fashionably broad, pointed shiny lapels. Mum had kept it after he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1958 while the Queensland Leader of the Opposition. I had memories of Dad heading out in it — to his Masonic Lodge meetings or to formal balls.
Looking around the Canberra’s elegant dining room on my first night aboard, I came to see that my posh single-breasted dinner suit, older than I, was very much out of date. I was an unsophisticated 26-year-old from a country town and fashion wasn’t to be my only discovery on that long voyage.
The first-class dining room’s menu was another learning experience for me. I had not actually looked at very many menus in my life. Beyond home-cooked meals, my gastronomic education began with pies from the horse-drawn cart at primary school, progressed to army food during National Service, and thence to Nick’s steak and the works in Brisbane, where quantity was the priority (the works were as much spaghetti, chips and other bits and pieces as would fit on a large plate.)

An Incomprehensible Menu

I would have struggled to understand the Canberra’s daily-changing menus even if they had been in English. Even after a lifetime since of restaurant meals, I’m still struggling to understand it. (Can anyone tell me what “crane” is, as in “Smoked Trout with Crane”?)  You can just imagine what I made of “Crème Chevreuse”, “Duckling à la Suédoise” and “Bouchée Dubarry”.
From memory, I think I stuck to a suggested set menu. That needed enough explanation for my uncultured mind. And the wine? For one shilling and ninepence I could have a glass of 1955 “Rhone—Hermitage” red, or for two shillings and one penny (one penny??), a “Hock—Rüdesheimer Superior”. I wonder what my sommelier son might make of those. But in those days I was too much of a prude and didn’t drink. Alcohol aside, throughout the voyage I tried everything I could and my knowledge expanded, as did my waistline.
Our table steward was a pleasant young Englishman from Liverpool, although for a reason I never discovered, most stewards were Indian, from Goa. Each steward had only one table of eight to attend to; each would take an order of up to three courses, not including dessert, from each of eight diners and return to serve each plate to the correct person, all without taking notes.
I later discovered that the steward had a dual identity. As I waited to disembark at Naples to go to Pompeii, I was standing with the Canberra’s entertainment officer. She pointed out an attractive young woman descending the gangway and asked what I thought of her. I replied that the young woman was indeed a remarkably good-looking young lady. The entertainment officer laughed. “That’s your table steward,” she said.

On a Camel in a Suit

My dated dinner suit, combined with my painful shyness, made mealtimes socially awkward. I noted that most tables were noisy, but conversation at our table of eight was muted. We had two members of the crew at our table — the prim and proper ship’s second-in-command, resplendent in uniform and war medals, and that entertainment officer. Thank heavens for that: she was what one would expect an entertainment officer to be, noisy, colourful and an excellent talker and carried the conversation for the whole table. Although her enthusiasm must have flagged when she tried to provoke conversation from me.
And so, our gastronomic voyage continued, via Colombo, Bombay, Aden and the Suez Canal, where passengers left the ship to visit Cairo. I still have a photograph of myself on the back of a camel in front of the great pyramid, dressed in a SUIT — another part of being a first class passenger.  The ladies wore gloves and hats, but they didn’t get on the back of camels.
On board, the entertainment included organized programs in the evenings — bingo and balls, concerts and cinema. During the day there were games on deck, including the popular shuffleboard, in which we pushed a flat disc along the deck with a long paddle-like stick. And there was never a shortage of food: I made a pig of myself at morning and afternoon teas, astonishing arrays of biscuits, cakes, pastries and other goodies.
On one occasion, tiring of the stuffiness of first class, I crept off to tourist class. (First- and second-class passengers were not supposed to mix — amazing in these egalitarian days.) I found a dance room, selected a pretty face, and asked for a dance. Off we went but, to my consternation, I found the owner of the pretty face was also very pregnant. I don’t usually inspect dance partners for pregnancy. I completed the dance and retreated in confusion to first class where very few women were likely to be pregnant. It was back to bingo. My very moral upbringing showed.
Six weeks that voyage took. Nearing Southampton, I was having great difficulty squeezing into Dad’s dinner suit.

P.S. I bought an up-to-date dinner suit for my wedding to a Sydney girl I later met in London. It hasn’t been worn for a while: I wonder if my son might one day pull it out of the cupboard and give it a run.

An Email from Dad

Some things just have to be shared... if you only knew my mother's stainless steel bowl cupboard... Correspondence from my father, waiting for me when I arrived home tonight:

“I wish I was still in Parliament: I could bring in some new laws that are much needed for me to retain my sanity. The law would restrict your mother from going to shops. Can you believe, can you really believe this: your mother came home just now with some MORE stainless steel bowls purchased from Lifeline. I would legislate to close all charity shops. More stainless steel bowls????  And a children’s book and God knows what else.  And MORE meat to go in the freezer. Where on earth will I put it?  Liver it is.  We are going mad on offal. And TABs. She won $40 I'm told. Hmmmph! I stayed home and blended the pumpkin soup. And looked at BBC News and the History Channel. And did the crossword.  Chicken sausages tonight.  They were on special yesterday, so what else would we buy. (I’d hate to tell you what goes into chicken sausages and other chicken things. I once went through the chicken abattoir in Toowoomba … you wouldn't want to know.)  And you think I live a quiet life.  No such luck."

Tongue Tied

Some of you are just going to HATE this post. I’m very sorry about that, but perhaps you should go away now and do some knitting or mow the lawn or whatever it is that you do and come back again tomorrow.
Because I’m going to rabbit on about a food subject, not for the first time, that is a bit difficult for most people.
Offal.
Or, more particularly, tongue.
There
I’ve said it.
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
For ages now, I’ve been trying to get some, um, oral history from Mum.
What did Grandma cook the first night Dad went to meet his future parents-in-law? (It was “sharp steak” … more on that another day.)
Which female ancestor was the one who smoked the pipe?
How did Great Grandmother Maud die?
Did Grandpa really have rabbit (that he’d trapped) and macaroni for breakfast?
How do you press an ox tongue?
Pressed ox tongue, brains in white sauce, lambs’ tongues in white sauce, tripe in tomato sauce, devilled kidneys, fried liver … they’re the stuff of my childhood. Offal was cheap, sold in every Australian supermarket in cling-wrap-covered white Styrofoam trays next to the rump steak and lamb chops; it came home with the groceries next to the Golden Circle unsweetened pineapple juice, the Fountain tomato sauce and the Praise mayonnaise. Offal was the stuff of myth and legend and apocryphal stories. (I remember a wonderful story I was told in Portugal about the origins of Oporto’s famous tripe dish. As I remember it, when Henry the Navigator was off raping and pillaging North Africa in the fifteenth century or so, all the city’s best provisions were borne away for the campaign… all that was left for those left behind was the tripe. I wish I had an equivalently evocative story for tongue.)
So when did offal become a rarity, only to be served at an occasional high-falutin’ restaurant to puffed-up diners mostly putting on a brave face? ("A fraudulent affectation," says Guardian writer Zoe Williams in an article on the subject.) It’s not hard to speculate in a pretentious food-writer’s-sort-of-a-fashion about how this happened… our increasing affluence; the stigma of offal as a meat for poor people; time-poor and poor cooks with no time or capacity to prepare it properly; the shift from rustic and wise butcher to sanitised supermarket; the shift from instruction manuals such as the Commonsense Cookery Book to glossy food magazines.
Those shiny happy titles don’t get their hands dirty with offal (after watching my mother peel her slobbering, curled ox tongue and cut away its “root” recently, I hardly blame them), but it’s a great pity because, quite apart from the fact that we’re losing a fine and (formerly?) frugal home-cooking tradition, offal is one of the most brilliant culinary experiences – both flavour-wise and texturally – and women through the ages – and the Japanese – have known this.

The 19th century: In The Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion (1895), author Mrs Lance Rawson suggests choosing a thick tongue with a good smooth skin. “To remove the skin,” she advises, “plunge into cold water for a minute or two, and it will peel off easily.”

In the early 20th century: Things were getting a little more sophisticated. Fannie Merritt Farmer in the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1907) suggests serving a braised tongue with a roux-based sauce of four cups of the water in which the tongue was cooked, Worcestershire sauce and stewed and strained tomatoes or, alternatively, breaded tongue with tomato sauce.

About 1948: Good Cookery, the Book of the Gloucestershire Training College writes: “A smoked tongue goes into cold water, a pickled tongue into lukewarm water. … If served hot, reheat it in stock and send to table covered with browned crumbs and with a good sauce. If served cold, glaze it and decorate it. If trussed, a frill is put around the root.”

In the 1950s: In the “Luncheon Dishes and Entrees” chapter of one of my favourite old cookbooks, the Hostess Cookbook (1952), the lady writer Helen M. Cox offers a recipe for “Hot Ox Tongue with Sauce Henri”. (Sauce Henri, apparently, is stock, meat extract or beef cube, with orange rind, blackcurrant or other dark jelly, mustard, flour, butter and sherry.) You should, says the author, garnish your tongue with ham rolls, prunes and sprigs of parsley.

By the Sixties: In Mediterranean Food (Penguin, 1965), Elizabeth David proposes Langue de Boeuf en Paupiettes: “Remove the horny part from an ox-tongue; blanch it in boiling water for 15 minutes and then cook in a casserole until the skin can be removed. When cold, cut in thin slices and cover each piece with a layer of meat stuffing; paint over with a knife dipped in beaten egg to unify the stuffing, roll the slices, put a small piece of bacon on each and tie up or pierce with a skewer. These should be toasted in front of the fire but can be cooked in the oven in a casserole. When they are almost cooked, sprinkle breadcrumbs over the paupiettes, and when they are a golden brown, serve with a sauce piquante.” (For such a sauce: “Fry a sliced onion in oil, butter or dripping, add a wineglass of vinegar and two cups of stock of whatever meat the sauce is to be served with. Add herbs, a clove of garlic, salt and pepper, and simmer until the sauce is a good consistency. A few minutes before serving, add a spoonful each of capers and chopped gherkins.”)

In the 21st century: Delia Smith is plumping for an ox-tongue revival, suggesting the tongue “needs to be well scrubbed with a stiff brush.” Meanwhile, Australia’s own Stefano de Pieri recommends braised ox tongue with star anise (“the use of offal is what makes Italian cuisine something special,” he says); Stephanie Alexander shares her idea for poached pickled ox tongue with roasted beetroot and salsa verde; a Balinese website I stumbled upon offers a recipe for ox tongue in sweet nutmeg sauce; and Northern Ireland’s Belle Isle School of Cookery cooks ox tongue with port jelly.

I asked my friend Greg Malouf, whose lambs tongue salad is one of my finest culinary memories, how he might prepare ox tongue. He was initially a bit disparaging – he hates cold tongue, he told me, it’s like polystyrene. (Ox-tongue-sandwich lovers such as myself might disagree.) It should be heated up in a pan over a low flame with a little lemon and olive oil, says Chef Malouf. Then he’d serve it sliced in a salad with Lebanese cucumber and a garlic, coriander and lemon dressing. All that lovely acidity cutting through the tongue’s richness.
So where do you start? You start by talking to your butcher and begging him or her to order a pickled tongue in for you. Then you might, bravely, attempt my Mum’s time-honoured recipe.



Mum’s Pressed Ox Tongue

1 pickled ox tongue
For a 1.5kg tongue:
¼ tsp dry mustard
4 cloves
¼ tsp peppercorns
1 dsp brown sugar
1 dsp brown vinegar
2 cloves garlic, crushed
enough water to cover tongue

Put all ingredients except tongue in a large saucepan and allow to heat up. Wash tongue. Put the tongue in the saucepan, making sure there’s sufficient water to cover the tongue, cover and bring to the boil. Simmer the tongue for three hours.
Remove the tongue from the liquid and cool until you can handle it. Peel the tongue and cut away the root.
Curl the tongue into a small stainless-steel bowl; sit the bowl on a plate (to take any overflow of juices), cover with an appropriately sized plate, and weight it down. Refrigerate overnight. The next day, upend the tongue onto a plate. It will keep for two or three days in the fridge.

I'm in Big Trouble

Oh boy, am I in trouble.
I TOTALLY forgot to mention in my list below one of my favourite, annual food memories – my Dad’s stuffing for the Christmas chicken.
Well, it serves him right for not taking that fact-checking drive I asked him to for Number 31.

100 Favourite Food Memories

I’m celebrating 100 posts on Elegant Sufficiency with a list of my 100 Favourite Food Memories. I don’t want to sound like a wanker here… I know I’ve been incredibly fortunate (and spent way too much money eating!). But what started as just a list has become a far more curious exercise, bringing back tastes and sensations and emotions and wonderful and difficult memories. (This list, which is in no particular order, would not have been possible without my crazily obsessive Virgo characteristic of filing systems and extensive notes.)
To mark this milestone (although my boss rather took the wind out of my sails when he told me that the author of one of the world’s most popular blogs about gadgets has written 6,500 posts), there’s something special at the end here that might interest you: If you’re yawning at my meandering memories, skip to the bottom.

Liqun roast duck restaurant

1. Peking duck at Beijing’s Liqun Roast Duck Restaurant – including a heaped plate of duck liver.
2. Crab-filled xiao long bao dumplings at Nanxiang steamed buns restaurant, Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai – to bypass the queues running out the door, on my visit here with my parents I had no option but to tell the waiters that my father was very unwell and needed to sit down urgently. Which, at the time, was a long way from the truth.
3. I can’t remember the details but Greg Malouf's AMAZING tongue salad at Mo Mo.
4. Pulled noodles at a streetside stall beside Yue Hu (Moon Lake), Ningbo China. OK to be honest, I was terrified of its hygiene levels, but I was with my plucky 60-year-old godmother who was teaching English in Ningbo at the time, and her enthusiasm for the noodles and the local beer was infectious.
5. The extraordinary vacherin with fine layers of meringue, Syrian apricot ice-cream and orange praline sorbet made by clever Alison Wall, the former pastry chef at Greg Malouf’s Mo Mo.
6. Loch Fyne oysters – eaten in a chill breeze blowing off the lake on the west coast of Scotland.
7. Mrs Wang’s zha jiang mian – the ubiquitous northern Chinese noodle dish. My godmother and I stayed with Mrs Wang and her family in their Beijing hutong courtyard house.
8. My first taste of green chicken curry in Bangkok with a man I loved – at a backstreet stall with kittens crawling over the tables.
9. Corned beef with parsley sauce: the first dinner Grandma would cook when we’d arrive at my grandparents’ place for holidays after the 12-hour drive from Queensland to Sydney when we were children. (Are we there yet?)
10. Sydney rock oysters at the miraculous Pier restaurant in Sydney; a teary, bonding meal with my brother.
11. Cold tofu cubes in the lightest wispy garlicky sauce, alongside the crisp deep-fried mutton at Shui Hu Ju restaurant (68 Peel Street, Hong Kong.)

Those buffalos and me, I mean, I

12. My first taste of Australian buffalo mozzarella in the Western districts of Victoria.
13. Wonton noodle soup on my exhausted, emotional, uncertain and lonely first night living in Hong Kong. (89 Hennessy Road, Wanchai.)
14. Crisp roast pork served the next night by the very kind Raymond Sinn at Hong Kong’s Tai Woo Restaurant. (27 Percival Street, Causeway Bay.)
15. Crème de Chou-Fleur, Truffes et Pain d’Epices Grillé – an intense cauliflower soup with slices of truffle and grilled spicy bread at Guy Savoy’s Les Bookinistes restaurant in the 6th – with Megan and Meaghan. How I miss them.
16. Tea-smoked duck at Bamboo House.
17. Sally Cuthbertson’s lasagna: layers of spinach, basil, tomato passata, provolone, ricotta, mozzarella, white sauce and pasta after a hard morning bottling tomato sauce under my ex-boss, her husband Slattery’s, exacting eye.
18. My 30th birthday meal at Mezzo in London – roast wild salmon with white beans and pistou, with Veuve Clicquot, my brother and his ex-wife, the self-centred Austrian sex kitten.
19. Spaghetti vongole on the terrace of an Amalfi restaurant with my mum and my brother.
20. Thai stuffed omelette with chilli fish sauce and jasmine rice at Meera Freeman's old Kin Kao in Prahran, Melbourne.
21. Paul Wilson’s poached egg, truffle and soft polenta – at Georges, at Radii and at the Botanical.

Spareribs, Silk Road style

22. The Silk Road flavours of the fried lamb spareribs with sliced chilli sauce at the crazy Old Beijing Zhajiang Noodle King restaurant.
23. Steve Szabo's “tarte tatin” of braised beef cheek + glazed root vegetables with parsley and truffle oil during his old Jimmy Watson’s days (I’m embarrassed to admit that I wrote “incredible orgasm” next to this on the menu I’ve just found from the night!).
24. Rudderfish in smoldering cedar bark at a special wine dinner for Mountadam Vineyards at the Grand Hyatt cooked by Kyoto chef Yoshihiro Murata.
25. Suckling pig in the town of Mealhada, Portugal.
26. Suckling pig at the Flower Drum for a Chinese New Year banquet: Gilbert Lau sliced the poor little piglet’s rouged skin into meticulous little squares and served them, if I recall correctly, with a little bun and some sweet sauce.
27. Jeremy Strode’s pig trotters – stuffed with sweetbreads and a wisp of ginger – at the now-defunct Pomme in Toorak, Melbourne.
28. Steamed black sesame paste dumplings in ginger soup in the back streets of Bangkok’s Chinatown.
29. David Thompson's red curry of minced Murray perch with shredded ginger green beans, Thai eggplants and basil – at a special dinner at the now-defunct Blakes restaurant in Melbourne.
30. Oeuf à la neige, crème anglaise et amandes at Le Petit Bofinger in Paris.
31. Caramel and meringue gelati at Massimo’s Gelati in Noosa. (I just asked my father to get in the car and drive 10 minutes’ up the road to check that I had this description right and, what would you know, he couldn’t be bothered! Ungrateful man!)

Purple-tipped water spinach in southern China

32. The purple-tipped water spinach stir-fried with garlic and mushrooms at a little restaurant in the Guangdong home town of Gilbert Lau during a trip with the former Flower Drum restaurateur back to his home village – his first trip there since he left in the late ‘50s. A wonderful story for another day.

The Shunde fish dish

33. Freshwater fish with Chinese olives and Yunnan ham in a restaurant in Shunde in the Pearl River Delta with Gilbert.
34. Fenouil confit, sorbet citron et basilic at Le Clos des Gourmets in the 7th arr. – intense sorbet with confit fennel.
35. Bresse chicken with foie gras sauce and truffles under the skin at Alain Ducasse in Paris (loved the stool beside my chair for our handbags).
36. Fried minced beef with onions and carrots cooked over a campfire during my Grade 10 school camp at Maroon Dam in Queensland.
37. Crème brulée at the Bibendum Oyster Bar at Michelin House, SW3.
38. Frites cooked in goose fat at Bistro Vue, Melbourne (pity about the completely naff design).
39. Tung Po pork at Liu Yuan Pavilion Shanghainese restaurant (54-62 Lockhart Road, Wanchai).
40. Tempura prawn soba noodles at a rickety stall near Tokyo’s Tsukiji Central Markets.
41. Spinach and mozzarella tramezzini sandwiches in Rome near Piazza Barberini.
42. My first taste of sushi in Japan – at Azuma restaurant in Asakusa, Tokyo.
43. Spaghetti alle cozze e pomodorini on Christmas night at the very local, very hidden Osteria Anice Stellato in Venice’s “Ghetto”; at the end of a misty walk through calles and over bridges following Veneto winemaker friends.

A hutong breakfast

44. An early-morning breakfast in a Beijing hutong – braised meat of an indeterminate variety, chopped minutely with coriander and green chilli, and served in a bun.
45. Life-threateningly spicy dan dan mian noodles at the hole-in-the wall Q Sichuanese restaurant in Wanchai.
46. An oyster omelette with tomato sauce in a Taipei street market. I was in a huff with a Chinese dissident poet.
47. Frank Camorra’s white gazpacho with grape granita at MoVida, Melbourne.
48. Bellinis at Harry's Bar in Venice. My diary recalls: “A woman pulls off a fine cream leather tan-trimmed glove and reveals a perfectly manicured hand and diamonds – immense”. Someone in my party stole an ashtray. We were much younger then.
49. Andrew McConnell’s smoked eel carpaccio, gewürztraminer jelly, dill and crème fraiche at Circa the Prince in Melbourne.
50. Mum’s lamb curry with sambals – most often cooked for Labor Party fundraisers when I was a child.
51. David Thompson’s miang som – pomelo and lobster on betel leaves.
52. Fresh sea urchin tossed through spaghetti at Cafe di Stasio in Melbourne.
53. Uni eaten out of a little wooden box with wasabi and soy with a dear old friend at her Hong Kong apartment.
54. Chu-toro, o-toro and uni sushi at Hong Kong’s Sushi Toki with that dear old friend. (Shop G1015, G/F., Yiu Sing Mansion, Phase 10, 14 Taikoo Shing Road, Taikoo Shing.)
55. That same dear old friend’s Danish open sandwiches with pickled and curried herring. How do you stop your heart breaking when, without explanation, that dear old friend stops returning your phone calls?
56. Kanom krok – coconut-milk-based street food snacks in Bangkok.
57. Juicy barbecued chicken with sticky rice served in a little basket and sweet chilli sauce at the Issan restaurant Krua Rommai. (16 Sukhumvit soi 36, Bangkok.)

Xiao long bao dumplings

58. Magical xiao long bao (“little dragon dumplings”) at Liu Yuan Pavilion Shanghainese restaurant – the original soup dumplings. (54-62 Lockhart Road, Wanchai.)
59. Raclette with boiled new potatoes at the home of Swiss friends in Bern.
60. Homemade bircher muesli with the same Swiss friends, including raspberries from their garden.
61. Sausages in white bread with tomato sauce outside the Prahran Market for a Country Fire Authority fundraiser.
62. With David Thompson, a stir-fry of catfish, curry paste and holy basil at Bangkok’s Tha Chang pier on the Chao Phraya River, dirty water sloshing up on the wooden boards underfoot.
63. Hoy tod – crisp mussel pancakes with bean sprouts – at Spice I Am in Sydney’s Surry Hills.
64. Unagi sushi at Kenzan, Melbourne.
65. The suckling pig my brother cooked in his father-in-law’s pizza oven, Christmas 2005. A niece-in-waiting.
66. River prawns with nahm pla prik at the riverside Phae Krung Kao restaurant in Ayutthaya with David Thompson (followed by a salad of deep-fried frog).
67. The oysters my brother shucks every Christmas.
68. Tony Tan's beef rendang.
69. Every Tony Tan dish that I’ve ever been lucky enough to eat.
70. My first taste of Jamón Ibérico, standing in the middle of a Valencia market. Swooning.
71. Kumamoto oysters from Oregon at Grand Central Station’s Oyster Bar.
72. Oyster omelette with chilli jam at the Flying Vegetable restaurant in Phitsanalok, Thailand.
73. Macaroni cheese at Bubby's Pie Co. in Tribeca with my friend Abby. It’s time I got in touch.
74. Mum’s pressed ox tongue. (Future post coming on this.)
75. McDonald;s Filet-O-Fish for the hangover after my 35th birthday.
76. Chilled lobster and corn chowder at Lever House at Park Ave. and 53rd.
77. Karen Martini's gorgonzola pannacotta with a salad of asparagus, radicchio, witlof, apple and aged balsamico.
78. Warm lamb’s tongue and potato salad with saffron potatoes and honey-lavender vinaigrette at Gary Danko in San Francisco.

Crab in Lockhart Road

79. Steamed crab with garlic at Yuet Wah Wui Crab, Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay.
80. Little gem lettuces with green goddess dressing and roasted beets at Chez Panisse downstairs.
81. Puree of summer pea soup, riesling, scallop carpaccio and peperoncino oil at L'Impero, New York.
82. Jeremy Strode’s free range eggs “sur la plat” with creamed mushrooms at the now-defunct Pomme.
83. Mum’s lambs brains in white sauce.
84. My friend Jane’s goats cheese salad, served at her old Paris apartment.
85. Crisp riesling, or fino sherry, at Ricky Ricardo's in Noosa as the sun goes down over the river, fried stuffed olives and aioli at the side.
86. Foie gras and cured pork on lentils at Jeanty at Jack's, San Francisco.
87. Robiola cheese with great tomato, bought at Peck food store in Milan, eaten at a truck stop with Mum and Dad after driving through a scary tunnel in northern Italy.
88. Cold Shanghai noodles served in a tumble in the middle of a platter, surrounded by little dishes holding condiments including chilli oil, vinegar, hoi sin-style sauce, pickled vegetables and ground peanuts at Kung Tak Lam Organic Shanghai Vegetarian Cuisine. Mix and match the toppings to create a personalised noodle dish. (31 Yee Wo Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong.)

Rut & Lek, Bangkok

89. Fried rice with crab and egg + Singha beer at the sidewalk Rut & Lek in Bangkok’s Chinatown (Yaowarat and Soi Texas): toilet paper rolls are on the table if you need a napkin.
90. Mum’s baked chicken with mayonnaise: a (bizarre) family favourite in the late ‘70s.
91. My first taste of a Parisian baguette – with unsalted French butter.

Bangkok street food: I need a name?

92. The Bangkok street food (above) that I can’t remember the name of: little sweet, soft, translucent pastry pockets with pork and I think peanuts in them. Can someone help?
93. The incendiary, chilli-oil-smothered pork dumplings at Man Jiang Sichuan restaurant. (1/F 482 Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay.)
94. The weisswurst or bratwurst from the deli-hall stall at Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. No sauerkraut please.
95. My first taste of fresh horseradish – whipped through cream and served with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding: a meal I cooked while “studying” at Le Cordon Bleu in London.
96. The fresh fish served at a long-table, flame-lit, tropical-sultry dinner on the Fijian island of Vatulele.
97. A farmers-market and garden-generated meal at the Bay Area home of friends, cooking teacher Linda Hillel and her husband, Jon: okra, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with kosher salt and barbecued; sautéed millet and bulgur wheat with red Russian kale, olive oil and garlic; tomatoes from the garden and basil; and Cypress Grove Humbolt Fog blue cheese.
98. Braised tripe at yum cha at Victoria Seafood restaurant, Wanchai, Hong Kong.
99. My first taste of rucola – after descending from the Roman ruins of Tiberius’s  "Damecuta" villa on Capri.
100. Strawberries from my late grandfather’s Sydney garden with icing sugar and cream at the big antique table with the lace cloth. It's now my Melbourne desk.

SOMETHING SPECIAL: OOH LA LA, A COMPETITION!

It’s your turn: I’d love to hear some of your Favourite Food Memories and, to encourage you to stop lurking and come out of the closet with them I’m running a little competition. Post a comment here with your Five Favourite Food Memories by Sunday, May 20, and I’ll send a prize to the person who writes what I judge to be the most fabulous. The prize (which I’ll post anywhere in the world) is a copy of the luscious and award-winning Saha: A Chef’s Journey Through Lebanon and Syria, by Greg and Lucy Malouf (Hardie Grant, 2005).

A Comment Is Worth a Thousand Words

Sitting here. Looking at the clock, wondering if the editor to whom I pitched the article I’m struggling to finish (on the subject of blogging) will ever again give me the time of day (I told her I could deliver before Christmas last year, seriously). Thinking about how my wrists and hands are hurting and perhaps I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome or something. Thinking my lower back hurts too and I’d better hop back on the Swiss ball if I intend to stay laptop-bound all night. Looking at the bunch of silverbeet shining happily at me from its kitchen counter perch ready to give me a healthy meal (if I get off my bum and cook it in a soup with white beans – Lucy, it’s your greens influence). Thinking about how I need to clean up before the cleaner comes tomorrow. Thinking about how pissed off I am that a courier stuffed up and my new Mac laptop didn’t get delivered today as it should have been and how I’ll have to make a special trip to pick it up tomorrow and how my credit card is screaming in pain. Thinking about finding the time to deliver my Taste of Yellow contribution to Barbara before it’s too late. Thinking about a wretched, delusional 7am gym appointment tomorrow I made with my training buddy. Thinking about the book I’m reading (M.J. Hyland’s Carry Me Down) and how nice it would be to snuggle up under my duvet with it NOW. Thinking how the couch looks good too, and some American crime show or other. Thinking about Joanna Newsom (RRR radio playing her right now) and her unusual voice and how I’d like to get one of her albums. Thinking about all the blog-updating I need to do. And thinking about comments – comments on blogs.

Commenting
Have I discussed this before? I can’t remember. But the subject has come up in the course of my interviews for the blogging article (which, as you can see, I’m not thinking so much about if I’m writing a blog post instead). The extraordinary Shula at Poppalina (who deserves an OAM of her own for her courage this month in revealing her mother’s suicide in her blog and writing, poignantly, brilliantly, intelligently, on the subject of suicide) tells me she’s obsessed with stats and comments. “I really need to get a life,” she added in an email to me this afternoon. Obsessed as I am too with stats and comments (I’ve been known to check them many, many times a day), I replied: “Hate it when a post like my latest about Dad's award doesn’t get many comments and then I’m so busy (like with deadlines) that I simply don’t have the time to get back there and put a new post in … feel like everyone who comes by goes ‘look…look! She only got two comments!’ Feel like it must have been a crap post so don’t want to comment on anyone else’s blog in case they stop by mine and see the crap post!” (Did you notice that I’d accidentally left on my Tungsten lighting mode for a couple of those pictures at Government House?)
Earlier this year, with the blogging article weighing heavily on my mind, I noted down from Californian blogger and pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon's Eggbeater: “We blog, you comment. Your comments are our fuel, our reason to go on posting, our food for blogthought … the salt on our meat, the eggs in our souffles, the chocolate sauce on our ice cream.” (I’d add, the sea urchin on my rice…) Madrid illustrator and blogger Ximena Maier, whose food blog Lobstersquad is a showcase for her irritatingly wonderful illustrations, wrote around the same time: “Someone leaves a comment, I feel very happy ... I am amazed that someone in Australia knows what I like for breakfast. If someone links to my blog, I feel a buzz that lasts for days. And every now and then, you start a flurrying correspondence with someone, and end up putting a face to a name.”

The Playground Theory
My theory is that the blogging world is a bit like a school playground (there is a chance here you know, that I could segue effortlessly in copy-and-paste mode between this post and my article about blogging and kill two pheasants with one stone, as it were … how good would that be?): The most popular girl in school=the blogger who gets the most comments and has the sexiest pics. The kid who is always putting his hand up and going “Miss, Miss!”=the blogger who comments on anything, everything to get noticed but still is ignored. The class nerd with big round spectacles=the bloggers who clearly put an extraordinary amount of work into their blogs and are meticulous in terms of accuracy, historical fact, and pompousness. The class dunce=the bloggers who can’t get through their first sentence without a spelling mistake. In food blogging terms, I’d say that Clotilde at Chocolate and Zucchini (with her petite, brunette Frenchish-ness) and Heidi at 101 Cookbooks (with her healthy glow and headscarf) are having daily playground catfights over the Most Popular Girl in school tag. I’ll be kind, though, and not go further with the analogy.
All that apropos nothing, except that I’d add: “Yes, yes, yes!” … Comments are gold, warmth, love, dynamite!

A Taste of Yellow
And instead of thinking about comments on blogs I should be thinking about Barbara's A Taste of Yellow, her contribution to the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s LIVESTRONG Day Day to raise awareness about cancer. Barbara asked bloggers to cook something, anything yellow for the day and post about it, and urged people to donate money here.
As anyone who has read my blog over time knows, this is an issue close to my heart. My father has an aggressive prostate cancer which was diagnosed very late (a story for another day … one that makes my blood boil). Armstrong’s book sits on the coffee table at my parents’ place (although Dad’s concentration is not so great these days and I’m not sure he’s read it). As I’ve written before, this personal experience of cancer has opened my eyes to a new world that millions around the globe know all too well. The cancer world of doctors’ and hospital visits; endless invasive, intrusive tests and the fearful waiting for their results; the awful indignities of treatments such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy; a sufferer’s tears and exhaustion and depression; debilitating, simply debilitating side effects. What becomes, effectively, a way of life.
My contribution to Barbara’s contribution to LIVESTRONG Day is for my Dad, who loves lemony things. I thought lemon delicious, lemon meringue pie, lemon sorbet, lemon souffle, but settled on this lovely recipe from that lovely, clever Englishman, Nigel Slater. In a food column in The Observer Food Monthly, he notes that the cake is “barely thicker than a quiche” and has a “light crunchy texture to complement the tartly creamy filling. (I cheated and bought a bottle of lemon curd, Forest Preserves brand, which seems to me to be from Dorset. Can anyone tell me the difference between lemon curd and lemon butter?)
Before I flew home to Melbourne yesterday from Queensland I reminded Dad that there was still some cake left in the fridge. “Do you really think I’d forget that?” he replied with a mischievous grin.

Nigel Slater’s Little Lemon Polenta Cake
Serves 6-8

3 large eggs
110g caster sugar
a medium-sized lemon
50g fine polenta (cornmeal)
30g ground almonds
For the filling:
300ml (a 284ml carton will do) double cream
250g lemon curd
To decorate:
crystalised violets or rose petals

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Line and lightly butter the base of a 20cm round non-stick cake tin. Separate the eggs, putting the yolks into the bowl of a food mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Add the sugar to the yolks and beat at high speed until they are pale, thick and creamy. While this is happening, finely zest the lemon and squeeze the juice. Pour the juice, a little at a time, into the mix and continue beating until it starts to thicken. Mix the grated zest, polenta and ground almonds, then stir them into the eggs and sugar. Beat the egg whites till almost stiff, then fold the mixture into them. Be gentle but firm, so you manage to both mix the egg white in thoroughly yet keep a light, airy texture. Scrape the mixture into the lined cake tin. Bake for about 30 minutes till the centre is cooked and the top lightly browned. Remove from the oven, run a palette knife around the edge and turn out on to a baking sheet. Leave to cool. At this point it may look less than promising, but don't worry. When cold, slice the cake in half horizontally and place the bottom half on a cake plate. Gently beat the cream until it is firm yet still voluptuous. Fold in the lemon curd, then use almost to smother the bottom half. Place the second half on top, then use the remaining lemon cream to cover the top and sides. Decorate with sugared violets or rose petals, and serve with soft fruit such as raspberries.