The Elegant Sufficiency

Soba Noodles with Ocean Trout

Since the trip last month I’ve had Japanese food on my mind, tofu has become a staple, I’ve massacred my hands on my lethal new knife (from the centuries-old Aritsugu knife shop in Kyoto’s Nishiki market, engraved with my initials), I’m making Japanese tea (probably poorly) several times a day and I’ve travelled over the bridge twice to Tokyo Mart (Shop 27 Northbridge Plaza, 79 -113 Sailors Bay Rd, Northbridge, 9958 6860) for essentials.

I picked up what looked like their last bag of Sukoyaka Genmai (Easy Cooking Wholegrain Brown Rice, product of the USA), which has overcome all my previous antipathy towards brown rice. (To follow this post, soon I hope, an exposition on our Tokyo hotel breakfasts, which every day featured a bowl of porridge made with genmai; and also a brilliant, simple suggestion for an immaculately healthy one-pot genmai rice dinner). I’m alarmed at how fast the packet is disappearing and praying that Tokyo Mart has stocked up for me.
Meanwhile, my bedtime reading has been a book that I stumbled on accidentally at the Aoyama Book Centre in Roppongi on my first day in Tokyo — Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji. Even though the weight it added to my baggage was crippling, it goes straight to the top of my Favourite Cookbooks of All Time list.

I’ve collected a few Japanese cookbooks over the years and all have failed me in one way or another. Mr Tsuji is my hero (How could I have missed the existence of his life’s work?) MFK Fisher provides the introduction and Ruth Reichl the foreword in a book devoid of photographs (but for one section of unnecessary pics of dishes) but rich with detail, cultural information, instructions, diagrams. The fine typography captures the purity, elegance and serenity of good Japanese food.
So far, I’ve reverently followed Mr Tsuji’s instructions for a primary dashi stock, but I’m preparing to follow his word on many other dishes with the religious fervour of a hundred thousand or more World Youth Day pilgrims. (Nothing like a bit of mass hysteria in your neighborhood…) Sea bream and rice (Tai Meshi), Chicken-‘n-Egg on Rice (Oyako Donburi), Potatoes Simmered in Miso (Jaga-imo Miso-ni), Spicy Eggplant (Nasu Itame-ni), Grilled Mushrooms with Ponzu Sauce (Yaki-Shiitake Ponzu-Ae) and Noodles with Chicken and Green Onions (Tori Nanba Udon) will, I hope, all grace my table in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, a soba noodle dish with ocean trout is something that has become a staple: I cooked it for my brother and his family a couple of weeks back and he called me today from the supermarket to ask for an ingredients list. (He hasn’t called back to ask for the method: hate to think what’s happening in that Bondi kitchen right now … My hunch is, it was hijacked by a two-and-a-half-year-old.)

Soba Noodles with Terikyaki Ocean Trout
Serves 4
(Adapted from a recipe in Old Food, by Jill Dupleix, Allen & Unwin, 1998; and with the dashi broth recipe from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji, 25th Anniversary Edition, 2006, Kodansha International)

400g soba noodles
2cm knob of fresh ginger, peeled and grated finely
4 small fillets of ocean trout, skinned (or salmon)
1 bunch of spinach, washed and stemmed
4 green onions sliced diagonally
Teriyaki sauce:
2tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp mirin
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp peanut oil
Dashi broth:
1 litre cold water
30g giant kelp (konbu)
30g dried bonito flakes (hana-katsuo)

To make teriyaki sauce: Combine soy, sake, mirin, sugar and oil in a microwave-safe dish and heat for short bursts until sugar has dissolved. (30-40 seconds.) Set aside.
To make dashi: Fill a pot with 1 litre of water and put in the kelp. Heat, uncovered, so as to reach boiling point in about 10 minutes. (Kelp emits a strong odour if it is boiled, so remove konbu just before water reaches the boil.) Insert your thumbnail into the fleshiest part of the kelp. If it is soft, sufficient flavour has been obtained. If tough, return it to the pot for one or two minutes. Keep from boiling by adding about ¼ cup cold water.
After removing the konbu, bring the stock to the boil. Add ¼ cup cold water to bring the temperature down quickly and add the bonito flakes. Don’t stir. Bring to a full boil and remove from the heat at once. (If bonito flakes boil more than a few seconds, the stock becomes too strong, a bit bitter and is not suitable for use in clear soups.) Allow the flakes to start to settle to the bottom of the pot (30 seconds to one minute). Remove foam, then filter through a sieve. Stir ginger through the broth.
To prepare fish: Brush ocean trout with teriyaki sauce and grill quickly on an oiled grill, leaving the inside slightly pink. Meanwhile cook noodles in boiling salted water until al dente (follow the instructions on the packet). Drain and rinse in cold water.
To assemble: Bring broth to just below the boil. Add noodles for 30 seconds to heat through, then divide noodles between four warmed bowls. Dip spinach leaves briefly into the broth to wilt them, and divide among bowls.
Ladle hot broth into each bowl and top noodles with grilled ocean trout. Scatter green onions on top.

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.

Around Sydney in 80 Canapes

So these are the excuses:

•    The two-year-old’s birthday party: a butterfly cake, fairy bread, watermelon, mini-quiches, a pink tutu from a proud aunt, a pink teaset from someone else, a pink music box, a pink hat and pink sunglasses from her mother. Are two-year-old girls genetically programmed to need pink, and are proud aunts genetically programmed to provide it?

•    Lovely Bell Shakespeare production of As You Like It at the Opera House. Saskia Smith’s Rosalind, Ed Wightman’s Touchstone and Philip Dodd’s Corin all wonderful… as were the crab sandwiches at the after-party, Gough and Margaret Whitlam’s stately, ageing presences and a couple of delicious wine-related lines picked up along the way:

The loyal servant Adam:
“Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty:
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.”
Act ii. Sc. 3.
(Pity I can’t say the same… more on this later…)

Rosalind: "I pray you, do not fall in love with me,
For I am falser than vows made in wine.”
Act iii. Sc. 5

•    A bit more swanning around … the Australian Chamber Orchestra and its 2008 season opening (am I sounding like a tosser yet?) … a Haydn symphony, a Mozart piano concerto and a bit of Schubert. Very fine fresh prawns at the after-party. And Richard Tognetti is very handsome.
•    Oh, yes, then there was the David Jones fashion parade. Awful, just awful, and I'm not talking about the fashion. I couldn’t start to tell you because I wouldn’t know where to finish. But the Moet and the fresh oysters were very fine indeed.
•    Very well, if you must know, the season opening night of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Buckets of Ravel for Valentine’s Day that moved the tubby Maestro Gelmetti so greatly that, at one point, we thought it highly likely that he might fly off his conductor’s podium and hover above us in the Opera House’s concert hall in the manner of Uncle Albert and Bert in Mary Poppins’s I Love to Laugh. Nice spinach/fetta pastries at the after-party.
•    Back down to earth and a brilliant discovery (at least for someone who walks through Chinatown every morning to catch her train, and again at the end of most days, and who has lamented this city’s lack of markets and accessible fruit and vegetable merchants): can someone please, please tell me why, in all the years I have been reading about Sydney food, restaurants, shops, chefs, I have never yet once seen anyone, I repeat, anyone, mention the fact that at the back of the old Paddy's Markets (hideous souvenir-tat trap it is now) there is still a working food market. Small and unextraordinary, but a WORKING FOOD MARKET nonetheless. It can never even begin to replace Melbourne's Queen Vic Markets in my pining heart, but it is, indubitably, a food market. There’s no deli hall — merely a sad meat stall or two and a couple of fish stalls. But there was skate (and I can’t remember the last time I saw that), and good-looking rainbow trout and snapper, and the normal roll call of salmon fillets and — how’s this — a couple of bloody great conch shells with their pearly-white meat flopping out wantonly. And, in the fruit and vegetable section, there waiting for me was the best sweet corn I have had since Hong Kong, and longans, and affordable lychees, and every conceivable Asian vegetable and herb my heart could ever desire. A five-minute walk from home and open seven days and I am happy, so happy. But I have to ask: do Sydneysiders consider it beneath them to shop at such a place? And why doesn’t Lord Mayor Clover Moore take a good long look at the markets and try to imagine how they could thrive again — especially given the increasing population of city residents?

•    Another momentous find, my acupuncturist’s very savvy recommendation (lifting 17 boxes of books last year during my move was not such a great idea): my best Sydney coffee so far — at Peaberry (166 Riley Street, Darlinghurst). Cool little café with a very decent big breakfast and very little pretension. What a pleasant change.
•    Oh how I could go on about why I have been so absent. … It was a very, Very Long Engagement indeed, lying on my couch watching Amelie’s Audrey Tautou in a wonderful story full of wit and whimsy and humour — and heart-wrenching pathos. Once I felt sure that she would find her lost, war-damaged love Manech, I was able to concentrate on all the wonderful bits of food scattered across her rotund aunt’s scrubbed timber kitchen table.

Says a defiant Mathilde (Tautou), convinced Manech is still alive: “He was taken prisoner and stayed with a German girl with braids and big boobs.”
Adds her aunt: “A Breton boy eating sauerkraut, impossible…” Later, she tosses crepes in the pan for her husband, who rolls them up and dips them in jam. The couple despair over the girl's pining ways. “She must eat, she’s making herself ill,” says the aunt. “Leave her the marrow bone,” says the uncle, slurping from his soup bowl, a man who clearly recognises a treat when he sees one.

•    Oh yes, there have been other events and commitments and deadlines, but there’s really only one final vital piece of information I must leave you with today: I’m off alcohol. For five weeks. Five weeks without a crisp riesling or complex chardonnay, without an interesting little drop from the Rhône valley or a boutique Yarra Valley pinot noir. Not a cold beer after a swim in the ocean, nor a tinkling gin and tonic on a balmy evening. No, five weeks, I swear. It’s simple really. Yesterday, waiting to be served in a queue at a café, I eavesdropped on the conversation behind me. “I’m off the booze,” he said — a nice-looking man holding a little girl. “Five weeks it’s been, and I’ve lost five kilos,” he told his friend. FIVE WEEKS AND FIVE KILOS…. I can do that. Hold me to it, for God’s sake! But how am I going to manage at tonight's opening night when the canapes start circulating?

Floundering

I'm on a roll, don't stop me, I may take another 10 years to write another post... offline, I sent George Biron (see blog spotlight at right) a cooking question. In a comment on my flounder post he suggested how to cook the fish, suggesting skinning it, putting it on a bed of fennel, and grilling it under a hot overhead grill. I quizzed him about the "skinning" bit... I cooked mine with skin on and loved it. His offline response to me, republished below, proved two things: 1. George responds very quickly if you use his "Ask the Chef" email link and, 2. He is a mine of information. When are you going to write that book George?

From George:

"I eat my ripe figs skin and all, so only rule is no rule.
But with flounders I find that the skin is a bit tough and the fillets a bit thin to crisp them without over-cooking the fish. Flounder also has two skins, inner and outer.
Quite easy to skin starting at the tail with a knife then slipping a finger under the skin until you have enough to grab then you can pull it off in one piece.
But as with the figs each to his own method."

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.

An Australian-Style Christmas

Could there be an uglier thing to witness, a sadder indictment on who we are in 2007, than the Sydney Fish markets on Christmas Eve. Australians' love for seafood gone mad, The overweight and the greedy and the rude, the pushing and the shoving, the queue-jumping and the viragos and the gluttons, the cold bags stuffed with the plunder of the sea, the 4WDs in the carpark, the television cameras, the six million prawns we will consume this Christmas, the "give me the biggest you've got", the plastic bags and packaging, the Salvos waiting gratefully for spare change, the St John ambulance tent waiting for casualties, the farmed kingfish and salmon and ocean trout, the New Zealand snapper and Indonesian fish fillets and Vietnamese prawns, the obscene amounts of money.
But alas I'm a hypocrite, for there is a bulging bag of prawns and a fat whole ocean trout in my fridge now to feed five tomorrow and a hole in my wallet.
I did catch the train there though. And I won't be returning next year.

SMS Fish

Gourmet's Ruth Reichl alerted me to this cool idea in her weekly e-letter: if you're in the States, in a restaurant, considering ordering fish, not sure if you're being environmentally conscious with your order or not, you can send a text message to the Blue Ocean Institute's Fishphone (30644). Type in the word fish and the name of the fish you want to know about. Apparently, the answer comes a few seconds later but I'm afraid, Australia-bound as I am, I'm not going to be able to test it for you.
Hope we get something similar here soon.

The Problem with Salmon (and Kingfish, and ...)

Had a great chat yesterday with Craig Bohm, Sustainable Fisheries/Threatened Species Campaigner at the Brisbane-based Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS). Was talking to him in relation to a short piece I’m writing for work but our conversation strayed into territory unrelated to the article and he confirmed some facts about fish that I knew, but was pretending not to know, would prefer not to know.
Eating ethically requires a strength of character that I wonder if I have. I like fish. I like seafood. I adore bluefin tuna belly (toro), love salmon and ocean trout, and probably any number of other species that should be left alone.
I asked Craig about salmon. In Australia, and probably in most other western countries, consumption of salmon — sea-cage aquaculture salmon — just keeps growing. Yet, the AMCS's Sustainable Seafood Guide tells me that we should avoid eating it.
For two reasons: first, the potential for environmental problems caused by escapee fish; second, the salmon are carnivorous, hungry things and eat massive volumes of wild fish. Apparently, there have been 20,000 lost fish from these sea-cage aquaculture properties since 2000. Those fish can form their own populations in the ocean, transfer diseases, become predators of wild fish, and cause displacement of other fish species, which previously might have lived happily in their natural environments. If it seems a remote possibility that farmed salmon could establish itself in the wild to such a degree, Craig offers the example of foxes, an introduced species in Australia that has caused any number of problems. It took three separate incidents of introduction in Tasmania before the species firmly established itself.
Then, as if I’m not feeling uncomfortable enough about my occasional salmon purchases, Craig tells me all about what farmed salmon eat. They like to eat other fish — pilchards and other small fish that’s turned into fishmeal. According to Craig, to produce one kilogram of farmed salmon can take between one and four kilograms of wild-caught fish.
Then he raises the subject of the other carnivorous fish that can be farmed, and so present similar problems – ocean trout, barramundi … and yellowtail kingfish.

Nobu Inspiration
I didn’t tell Craig that, only two days before our conversation, I’d pulled the hefty bones out of fillets of yellowtail kingfish on my kitchen bench and then dunked them in a marinade of sake, mirin, white miso paste and sugar.
A post on Rasa Malaysia had reminded me of Nobu's signature black cod dish and, with Nobu opening its first Australian restaurant in Melbourne last month, it seemed like a good time to try the recipe (it also fits my criteria for Elegant Light dishes). Black cod – any sort of cod – isn’t something I see where I buy fish and an expert had suggested to me that kingfish might be a good substitute. I liked the result (see below), but it was certainly dryer than I expect fish to be.
Then I called Nobu Melbourne chef Scott Hallsworth and it became apparent that yellowtail kingfish really isn't the best substitute for black cod (he gets his black cod flown in from Japan). Far better, he mused would be Patagonian toothfish. Or salmon. So I'm back to square one. Of course, you're supping with the devil if you eat Patagonian toothfish, which is threatened by illegal overfishing and definitely not on the Australian Marine Conservation Society's list of approved fish.
But, if my conscience stops me from trying the Nobu recipe with salmon, there is one sliver of light and hope: Scott Hallsworth tells me that it's a fabulous technique to use with Wagyu beef.

Nobu-style Kingfish
(Serves 2; needs to be marinated for at least 24 hours before cooking)

2 yellowtail kingfish fillets
1/4 cup sake
1/2 cup mirin
2/3 cup white miso paste
1/2 cup caster sugar
Green onions to finish or, if you can be bothered, 2 stalks hajikami

To make the marinade, bring the sake and mirin to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Boil for 20 seconds to evaporate the alcohol. Turn the heat down to low and add the miso paste, mixing with a wooden spoon. When the miso has dissolved completely, turn the heat up to high again and add the sugar, stirring constantly with the wooden spoon to ensure that the bottom of the pan doesn't burn. Remove from heat once the sugar is fully dissolved. Cool to room temperature. Set aside a small amount of the marinade for serving.
Pat the fillets thoroughly dry with paper towels and remove any bones (they should be large and simple to tug out: tweezers help). Slather the fish with the marinade and place in a non-reactive dish or bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap. Leave to steep in the refrigerator for a minimum of 24 hours – two days is better.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Lightly wipe off any excess miso clinging to the fillets but don't rinse it off. Heat a non-stick frying pan and fry the fillets until the surface of the fish turns brown. (They will burn very easily, so keep a close watch on it.) Transfer the fish to the oven either in the frying pan or to a baking dish. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.
Arrange the black cod fillets on individual plates and garnish with sliced green onions. Add a few extra drops of warmed marinade to each plate.

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.

Magazine Watch

National Geographic's April edition (OK, I'm a bit slow here; you should see the piles of newspapers and magazines lying around my apartment, waiting to be read) offers a special report, Saving the Sea's Bounty, exploring the tragedy of our desecrated oceans with typically extraordinary images:
Quote 1: "To supply the world's sushi markets, the magnificent giant bluefin tuna is fished in the Mediterranean at four times the sustainable rate."
Quote 2: "Emblematic of First World exploitation of Africa's resources, only the carcasses of Nile perch are affordable sources of protein for some Tanzanians living around Lake Victoria. Perch fillets are stripped in 35 lakeside processing plants and shipped north, mainly to Europe..."
Quote 3: "New Zealanders embraced a simple idea for restoring their overfished coastal seas: Set aside entire ecosystems for protection. No fishing. No traps. By insisting that nothing be taken, a nation watched its waters surge back to life."
Beyond seafood, the magazine's image of two young grizzly bears simultaneously scratching their backs on a road sign in Alaska's Denali National Park is brilliant. (How cool is this magazine: this edition also includes an article called Hip Hop Planet: "Whether you trace it to New York's South Bronx or the villages of West Africa, hip-hop has become the voice of a generation demanding to be heard.")
On a different note, the Australian edition of Travel & Leisure (sadly, no online presence I can find to link to) includes an excellent feature on Kuala Lumpur, as seen through the eyes of KL-born Australian master chef Cheong Liew. Great pics and recipes including Mamak Crab and Curry Laksa.

The Wonder of Sea Urchin

Ask me what my favourite foods are, and the list would look something like this, depending on the season, the time of the month, the day of the week:

1. Sea urchin
2. Mangosteen
3. Sea urchin
4. Good bread with French butter
5. Sea urchin

I can’t remember my first taste of this delicacy; it could have been at St Kilda’s Cafe Di Stasio where it would have been served with a fine, thin pasta, or maybe it was at the Japanese restaurant Koko. Either way, it was a revelation: creamy, unctuous, slippery, sensual, rich with the taste of the sea. (Rubber Slippers in Italy offers a lovely sea urchin pasta recipe and photographs that are far superior to my poor illustration.)
In Hong Kong, I had a favourite Japanese restaurant in the Taikoo Shing district, the excellent Sushi Toki (Shop G1015, G/F, Yiu Sing Mansion, Phase 10, 14 Taikoo Shing Rd, Tai Koo Shing. Phone: 2186 6969). There were many wonderful sessions propped up at Sushi Toki’s sushi bar with a dear old Japanese-speaking friend, downing chilled sake, nigiri uni (is that the correct way to describe sea urchin on sushi rice wrapped in crisp, toasted nori?), horse mackerel sushi with ginger and, I have to be honest, the sinful toro and o-toro and chu-toro (bluefin tuna belly).
I ask for uni anytime I’m ever at a Japanese restaurant in Melbourne, but it’s rarely available. Not sure what its sustainability status is here, but it certainly has been over-harvested in Japan, which consumes 85% of the world’s yield. I found that fact in an interesting recent article in Macquarie University News. It reveals that two Macquarie marine scientists have received close to a million dollars to develop the “world's first commercial closed-system aquaculture system for the production of sea urchin roe from Tripneustes gratilla – the Lamington Urchin.
So what set me off on this meandering posting path? The discovery yesterday, while searching for something else, of this evocative passage in the fish chapter of Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food (Penguin, 1970) that left me trembling and giddy with excitement. I can feel the salt on my skin and the warmth of the Egyptian sun. I had to share the sensation.

"Hunting for ritza (sea urchins) is a favourite pastime in Alexandria. It is a pleasure to swim out to the rocks, dive into the sea and discover hosts of dark purple and black, spiky jewel-like balls clinging fast to the rocks, a triumph to wrench them away, and a delight to cut a piece off the top, squeeze a little lemon over the soft, salmon-coloured flesh, scoop it out with some bread, and savour the subtle iodized taste, lulled by the rhythm of the sea."

Five New Things I Know

Spent some time at Masterclass today and yesterday, two days of cooking demonstrations and classes that are part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Local and international chefs demonstrating included Spain’s Andoni Luis Aduriz, London’s Sam and Sam Clark (Moro), New York’s Will Goldfarb (Room 4 Dessert), Rose Gray (one half of London’s River Café partnership), Vincenzo Cammerucci from Lido Lido in Cesenatico on the Italy's Adriatic Coast, Darwin’s Jimmy Shu (Hanuman), Adelaide’s Cheong Liew and Tony Bilson from Sydney.

1. The River Cafe Almond Tart with Berries (above)

Divine and, for a pastry klutz like me, seductively rustic. The beauty of this tart is that, according to chef Rose Gray, it can “take you through the whole year”. River Cafe partner Ruth Rogers broke a hip skiing just before Masterclass and was not able to attend, so a solo Gray talked about using plums on the tart in autumn, Seville orange jam under the frangipane filling in winter, blackberries in summer. Curiously, they use a cheese grater to grate the pastry into the flan tin, then press it in by hand – “we like it to look rough,” Gray said. This minimises the amount the pastry is handled. And they always use whole almonds rather than almond meal, which can be less than fresh.

350g plain flour
pinch of salt
225g unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes
100g icing sugar
3 egg yolks
Filling:
350g blanched whole almonds
350g unsalted butter, softened
350g caster sugar
4 eggs
750g strawberries, washed and stalks removed, or raspberries
100g icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Pulse the flour, salt and butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, then the egg yolks, and pulse again. The mixture will immediately combine and leave the sides of the bowl. Remove, wrap in cling film, and chill for at least an hour.
Coarsely grate the pastry into a 30cm loose-bottomed fluted flan tin, then press it evenly onto the sides and the base. Bake blind for 20 minutes until light brown.
Reduce the oven temperature to 150°C. For the filling, put the almonds in a food processor and process until fine. Cream the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale and light. Add the almonds to the butter and sugar and blend, then beat in eggs, one by one. Pour into the pastry case and bake for 40 minutes. Cool a little.
Cut the strawberries into halves lengthways, or quarters if they are very large. Push the strawberry pieces into the tart, standing them upright, while the tart filling is still warm.
Dust with icing sugar and serve with crème fraiche.

2. Why We Should Eat Australian Salmon

I’d never heard of Australian salmon and all of a sudden I’m hearing about it left, right and centre. Plus, I saw it at the markets (at Prosser’s seafood stall) last week for the first time ever, all gleaming and seaweedy. It is actually a member of the perch family, and no relation at all to salmon. Aliases include bay trout, blackback, kahawai  and sambo. It is commonly caught in the waters of Port Phillip Bay (the bay that gives Melbourne some pretty ordinary beaches). I’ve never tried the fish, but apparently it can be strongly flavoured and stringy.
At Masterclass, it came up in a discussion about sustainable seafood between Canadian chef Robert Clark, from Vancouver’s contemporary fish restaurant, C Restaurant, and Melbourne’s Paul Mathis (SOS vegaquatic restaurant). When Clark’s Australian sous chef heard that his boss was going to be cooking bay trout during his Australian visit, he was scornful. “We put it in crabpots and feed it to our cats,” the sous chef told him.
The point of the discussion was that Australian salmon is a sustainable species that we should be eating in preference to the many other varieties of unsustainable fish that we more commonly devour. Clark told the audience that he had cooked it all week during his guest chef stint at SOS, to some acclaim. “It reminded me of a sardine and I treated it like a sardine,” he said. That meant salting it to prevent deterioration, then brushing it with a quince jelly and caramelising it in a hot pan.
Next time I see it at the markets, I’m going to grab some. Perhaps I’ll cook it as Greg and Lucy Malouf suggest in Saha (Hardie Grant, 2005): brushed with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, then grilled or barbecued and served with a lentil tabbouleh (lentils, lemon juice, mint, parsley, shallots, tomatoes, allspice, cinnamon).

3. Vincenzo Cammerucci's Gnocchi-Making Method

It’s new to me, but Cammerucci’s technique is based on a choux pastry and the result is exquisite (smart Sam at Becks & Posh wrote about this method a year ago). The Michelin-starred Cammerucci, known for his “New Italian and European” cuisine, was demonstrating “Gnocchi soffiati di zucca con sgombro affumicato rapa rossa” – pumpkin gnocchi with smoked mackerel and beetroot. I’ll leave it to you to come up with your own sauce.

250ml water
salt and pepper
100g butter
175g flour
5 eggs
225g pumpkin puree (steamed pumpkin, pureed)
2tbsp parmesan cheese

Boil the water with salt, pepper and butter. Put the saucepan to the side of the stove and add flour, beating quickly as you add it. Return the saucepan to a gentle heat and continue beating the mixture, extremely vigorously, until it falls away from the sides and the spoon. Add eggs one at a time and continue beating vigorously. You may not need all the eggs – you are looking to achieve a soft and smooth consistency. Add the pumpkin puree, cheese and season to taste.
This is the bit I like: To cook, bring a pan of salted water to the boil. Take a strong, clear plastic bag and slice a 2cm hole in one corner. Filling the plastic bag like a piping bag, take a strong grip on it in your left hand (if you are right handed), forcing the mixture into the corner. In your other hand, take hold of a good sharp knife. Start squeezing the mixture out slowly and, as it comes out, swipe the knife down to slice off a small disc of gnocchi, letting it drop into the water. Dip the knife in the boiling water every few cuts so the gnocchi cuts cleanly. Cammerucci did this swiftly, elegantly, and in a terribly sexy fashion. The gnocchi won’t take long to cook: it’s ready when it floats to the surface.

4. Tony Bilson’s Technique to Cook Fish

Bilson, whose Bilson's Restaurant at Sydney’s Radisson Plaza Hotel specialises in fine French food, told the session that he was reading Escoffier when he was 13. I suppose you have to pay attention to a man who claims that. So, his fish method: He heats his pan, then puts his fish, skin side down, on a piece of lightly oiled/buttered silicone paper. (“If you see it burning and it bursts into flame, you’ve got the wrong paper.”) The fish cooks on the paper in the pan and even browns through it. As you would if you were cooking it without the paper, you turn it over when the time is right. The benefits of this method? It doesn’t stick to the pan; you can cook several pieces of fish at one time on one larger piece of silicone paper and remove them all simultaneously; “the finish you get on the fish is incredibly clean”; and, if you’re using a barbecue plate, the method guarantees “no flavour transference” (from a dirty, or well-used plate). Similarly, you can cook a number of things on the same plate without flavour transference between the items. So there.

5. Jimmy Shu’s Sichuan Salt

Came in late to Jimmy’s session but was intrigued by an idea he threw out – Sichuan salt. In a mortar and pestle, pound one part Sichuan peppercorns to five parts sea salt. Jimmy suggested sprinkling the resulting salt over salads, or over Chinese ban ban chicken (I know it as bang bang chicken), or using it as a dip with olive oil.

A Fine Mussel Soup

I like my mussels rough around the edges. Butch and hairy and crusty as though they’ve been away from civilisation for too long like an offshore oil rig worker or a merchant seaman. There’s some considerable satisfaction to be had in giving them an extreme makeover. Manhandling them into the sink, tugging out their beards, scrubbing away the grit and dirt until they gleam in all their blue-shelled Sunday best. These mussels? They came looking like they’d never done a day’s work in their life. Took me a while to work out why, then it clicked: I’d bought them at Melbourne’s Prahran Markets south of the river instead of my normal Queen Victoria Market on the northside. (Melbourne’s north-south demarcation is a curious thing worth a story on another day.) Prahran Markets are a pair of Manolo Blahniks to Queen Vic’s Blundstone boots. The ladies and gentlemen south of the river clearly have soft hands, squeamish tendencies and don’t like to dirty their shiny European kitchens. My mussels were disappointingly clean-shaven and twice the price (about $8 a kilogram instead of $4 to $5) because Claringbold's had done most of the hard work for me.
Didn’t affect the taste though: mussels are still one of the most brilliant and underrated of seafoods. I love their voluptuous-slippery texture, their sweet-salty fleshiness, their briny aroma. They stack up on the sustainable seafood front too, according to my Sustainable Fish Finder. And, very conveniently, they’re also acceptable when it comes to points. WeightWatchers points. My trainer’s on my back and my wardrobe is looking scrappy and I refuse to invest a brass razoo on anything new for winter until the size on a label is one I can say out loud without blushing. So I’m counting points and clocking up miles going nowhere on an exercise bike and again focusing my mind on dishes that deliver on flavour but not on too much else. So, another ES Light dish, this time inspired by one from Elizabeth David’s delectable Italian Food.
I have an illustrated edition, first published in 1987 (Ebury Press), and it’s seductive from still-lifed cover to cover. David devotes a chapter to fish soups and, like every other chapter in the book, it’s illustrated with appropriate works of art: Giuseppe Recco’s “Marine Landscape with Fish and Oysters” (1634-95); Vincenzo Campi’s “The Fish Seller” (1536-91); a fishing detail from a Roman mosaic.
The recipe below is based on her Zuppa di Cozze. In terms of the issue of recipe copyright, I reckon this is one that I’ll get away with. David is endearingly vague and free-form when it comes to quantities and direction, so what follows is my interpretation. And I’ll be at the Vic Markets this week to pick up some butch mussels to try out either Stephanie Alexander’s suggestion in The Cook’s Companion (Viking, 1996) of a mussel salad – shelled steamed mussels, boiled waxy potatoes, parsley, spring onions and a mustardy vinaigrette on salad leaves; or Peter Gordon’s salad in Salads (Quadrille Publishing, 2005) – potatoes, broad beans, mussels, red onions, hijiki seaweed and watercress with a saffron-cumin dressing.

(The Fish Seller, top)

Mussel Soup
(Serves 2)

5 pints of mussels, debearded and washed
1tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, sliced
pepper
250ml white wine
720ml bottle of tomato sugo
1tbsp thyme or marjoram
¼ cup basil
twist of lemon peel
dried chilli flakes to taste
¼ cup parsley, chopped

Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a deep heavy-based saucepan. Add the onion and fry over a medium heat until it starts to brown. Add the celery, sliced garlic and a good grind of black pepper. Fry for about two minutes then add the white wine. Fry off for a couple of minutes, then add the tomato sugo. Add thyme or marjoram, basil, lemon peel and chilli.  Bring to the boil, then turn down to a low simmer. You can prepare this soup base a day or more ahead. Just before you are ready to serve, add the mussels to the simmering soup, cover and cook. They are cooked when they open: remove each mussel as it opens and set aside. To serve, remove half the mussels from their shells and return to the soup. Return the remainder of mussels in their shells to the soup. Add the parsley at the last minute.

Rites of Passage

Ming Dynasty funerary ware: Models of typical dishes

Before I moved back to Melbourne from Hong Kong in 2004, I entertained the ambitious, possibly delusional, idea of quitting my newspaper job and moving to China to write a book about regional Chinese food. Delusional because I speak no Mandarin; delusional because it’s such a mighty subject. (It was no less delusional to move back to Melbourne for a love affair, but that’s another story.)  In preparation for my task, I started to collect anything and everything I could find about the subject; cluttering my study still are mountains of files about Chinese food … books of course, but also reams of newspaper and magazine clippings, brochures, booklets, and scrapbooks and photographs from my own fairly limited travels in China.
I was always especially interested in Chinese folklore and tradition related to food, which I had imagined I would effortlessly and compellingly weave into my narrative. Were I still to harbour my delusional idea (and I suppose there’s still a kernel of thought about it in the back of my mind), I would have been very quick to print-out and file an email sent to me by Jane Wong, Melbourne food lover and dedicated respondent to my posts. Jane started off by telling me a little more about the way the southern Chinese cook pippies then, as an aside, told me about her plans for the weekend – her grandmother’s funeral in Hong Kong. She has given me permission to publish her email, which explains eloquently a hugely significant Chinese tradition … I think Jane might find the illustration above an interesting accompaniment to her lovely words. It’s a photograph of models of food dishes from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), funerary objects that were found in a tomb during an excavation in Jincheng, Shanxi province (noodle and black vinegar territory). I pulled it from a catalogue I picked up at an exhibition in Hong Kong called Fine Dining: Ancient Chinese Culinary Ware (presented in Hong Kong by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and the National Museum of China).
Jane writes:

A Weekend in Hong Kong

Steamed pippies, stir-fried in a light sauce of Xiaoxing wine, garlic, ginger, spring onion, chilli, a dash of light soy sauce, a little rock sugar, mandarin peel and some fermented black beans, is a southern Chinese dish. My dad is of Hong Kong origin and he said the servants used to make it when he was a kid. I have vivid memories of tucking into it on (the Hong Kong island of) Cheung Chau, and also hunkered on a low stool over a big bowl of them at a “dai-pai dong” stall in the street near my old offices in Tai Koo Shing. Clams and pippies are said to be good luck foods in China, as they resemble coins. Further north they stir-fry them with yellow bean paste, ginger, spring onion and master stock.
We’re actually off to HK this weekend for my grandmother’s funeral. For my partner, Robin, it will be a culture shock, having led a sheltered Anglo-centric life in Hampton. To top things off he will witness the strange oriental funeral rituals that westerners rarely see, featuring astrological divination and some quite bizarre Taoist ceremonies. After a number of days of rituals, it all culminates with the cremation ceremony. I dare say that Robin will feel it is hocus-pocus but I find the spirituality and the sense of community that is involved quite comforting. As my grandmother was 93, it will be a happy ceremony, celebrating her long life.
The funeral banquet starts with dessert – typically a sweet soup – so that only the sweetest words will pass from your lips about the deceased. I’m sure it will also feature some of my grandmother’s favourite dishes like smoked duck braised with taro and delicate sweet vinegar pork ribs. I remember that she used to have a strong aesthetic ethic, which not only governed her sartorial splendour but also extended to “not eating anything ugly”! She also had a penchant for fish sauce as a seasoning, having spent part of her childhood in Vietnam, which fortunately allowed her to be spared from the agonies of foot binding. And, as my grandmother’s ghost told me, in the afterlife she is going to begin a happy new adventure, where the burdens of the past will be erased and the sense of joy cancels all pain.
As for me, I’m hanging out for Chinese roast goose. It’s been five years since I was in HK last – for another funeral – and my family tell me the dining scene has since been scarred by SARS, bird flu and a number of food substitution rackets emanating from mainland China. It will be interesting to see – HK’s always evolving, fads come and go, new buildings pop up quickly and the pollution just seems to get worse.

Pippies Part II

Meant to write yesterday (but I was already too long-winded) that in my Googling for how to remove grit from the pippies, I came upon the funniest chatroom – the Australian Fishing Community Chatboards.
In reply to Straddie_Flyer’s query about how to cook them, Jeffo said: “You could use them for bait to catch a nice feed of whiting and eat them … I know what I would rather...”
CHRIS_aka_GWH added: “I agree Jeff, but as a broke wannabe surfer bum in the 80s I ate em all the time and searched for loose 5c coins to splurge and buy a Chomp [an Australian chocolate bar] …” Bidkev said: “Pass me another brandy mate … I must be cracking a wobbly ... thought this thread read, ‘How to Cook Puppies’.”
Hilarious… I might have to add the Australian Fishing Community Chatboards to my links.
Anyway, their methods to remove the grit seem all to focus on regular changes of water – from saltwater to freshwater; apparently those sensitive little things notice the freshwater immediately and, horrified, throw out their grit.
Meant to write also, that had my mother’s pantry and herb garden been a little more Oriental, I might have tried a Neil Perry recipe instead of the Italian-ish pasta. Perry’s Stir-Fried NZ Pippies with Asian Flavours (garlic, ginger, palm sugar, soy, mint, basil coriander, green onions) sounds brilliant … clams, even mussels, could stand in for the pippies, I’m sure.

Hunting and Gathering

I’m wondering if there’s some sort of pippie alarm system. As I ground my feet into the Sunshine Beach sand yesterday afternoon in glorious sunset solitude and calm, I wondered whether there was some sort of high-frequency pippie alert echoing through the sand under my feet. As I spotted one telltale, air-bubbled ‘V’ mark-in-the-sand after another, hauled up one pale gleaming-shelled pippie after another, I even found room for some guilt. I wonder if pippies feel pain, have foresight? Did they know they were destined for my mother’s best frying pan and olive oil and herbs from her garden.
I’ve always been a bit wistful and regretful that I didn’t come from a line of hunters and gatherers. Envious of the old schoolfriend whose father had a boat and came home with an ice-chest of fish and his beaming photograph in the local paper with his catch; and of the friend who took me diving for abalone right outside his Flinders beach back-door and, efficient and lean in his wetsuit, sliced the mollusc clean off the rocks without having to flail and grab desperately at sea reeds to stay in one spot, and hack at the poor things; and of those with gardens and chickens and eggs and fruit trees instead of a concrete balcony.
But here was my chance to join that fortunate, earthy clan.
A Saturday afternoon and I had taken my cake to Dad in hospital (baked in my mother’s disgrace-of-an-oven … Kleenmaid … words fail me ... some days after I first mentioned the cake … more to come soon on that minor triumph in the face of any number of odds); had read The Australian while he slept, wandered the hospital gardens with him (he is calm, finally, and sleeping deeply, after heaven knows how long, and prepared for the treatment ahead). Then it was my time, finally.
Picked up towel and sarong and sunglasses and Toni Morrison’s disturbing Pulitzer-winner Beloved; took the beach path below our house; stopped under the sheoaks to watch a pack of frenzied feeding rainbow lorikeets; and staked my claim to a patch of white sand on a near-empty, mile-wide, kilometres-long beach.
The surf lifesavers were having weak Queensland beers now in the clubhouse; the shallows on this often treacherous beach, heavenly. Lying on my back, studying my feet and their dying pedicure protruding from the water, backgrounded by a softening sky. Lying on my front then, the final breaths of the waves even-tempered and transparent, the microscopic shards of shell and sand grain each almost a character unto itself. Digging my hands into the sand and feeling the pain as the grains forced themselves up under my fingernails, grabbing at pippies as they tipped themselves vertically and shot down through the thick sandy depths.
I think this is what my Dad has to recapture, and it comes too rarely for me and, I suppose, most of us; the moment, a stop, a pause. No what-do-I-have-to-do-now or rushing or worrying or pushing and shoving or writing lists or thinking about deadlines or housework or bank accounts and bills or is-my-career-on-track or other fears and arrangements and whether-my-boss-likes-me-or-not and does-it-matter or can-I-afford-that or do I need to wash my woollens. Just sitting, lying, not thinking, feeling a breeze, listening to the sea, looking at a tree, a bird, an ocean.
I have to grab at moments like this: right now, sitting and writing on a windswept deck with a full moon shrouded in cloud looming up behind Norfolk pines, and the sound of the waves and a cheap white wine beside me and my mother in there cooking my dinner.
Oh, and the pippies? Toni Morrison was ignored. The hunter-gatherer in me emerged. A littered plastic bag that might have suffocated a dolphin filled with water. One haul of pippies after another dumped into the plastic bag. An onlooker might have seen a mad-eyed woman in a blue swimsuit with a neglected bikini-line grinding her feet into the sand and kicking a spray of it into the air, then scrabbling for the molluscs that were too slow.
The satisfaction of a kilogram of them! A kilogram of them, I swear!
A final wallow in the shallows. The sun down now, the beach deserted.
And, you know, I reckon those pippies do have an alarm system of their own, a defence force of sorts. Rolling from back to stomach I felt a sting … my face throbbed, I thought of Steve Irwin, I clutched at my face, I felt a tendril. It came away in my hands, a long, jellyfishy thing, pale blue, and my face still throbbed. The pippies had their revenge. My face streaked with welts.

PS: How on earth do you get the sand out of pippies? An overnight soaking and many changes of water later and my pippies were still gritty.
PPS: Are pippies sustainable seafood?

Sound Bites

The iPod was meant to be my company on the extremely (extremely) vigorous, daily, crack-of-dawn walks that were my New Year’s resolution 10 months ago. Of course the walks weren’t daily, and those walks there were, weren’t terribly vigorous, and another New Year’s Eve looms where I can make yet another resolution about a daily fitness regime that I’m unlikely to keep.
The iPod though, has been a fabulous thing nonetheless. For music, of course, but equally for podcasts, which I’ve downloaded from the BBC, NPR in the US, Australia’s wonderful Radio National and, more recently, from an unknown (in Australia at least) Chicago-based “food podcast network” called Eat Feed that I stumbled on. It was created by Anne Bramley, a clearly unusual woman who is finishing her PhD in English, specialising in Renaissance food and drink. From what I can gather from the podcasts I’ve heard, Eat Feed is run on a frayed shoestring by a team of enthusiasts, relies on donations, and is committed to good things such as sustainable eating and seasonality.
Thanks to Eat Feed, I know now, for example, that in North Carolina, the word “barbecue” is synonymous with barbecued pork – pork shoulder, pulled pork, the whole hog. Thanks to the same Eat Feed podcast on barbecues, I also know that in central Texas, barbecue means beef, perhaps beef brisket. Meanwhile in Owensboro, Kentucky, on the banks of the Ohio River, the word “barbecue” pretty much equates to barbecued mutton. (I know now too, thanks to a search to check the spelling of Owensboro, that the town hosts the International Bar-B-Q Festival every May when “smoke from hickory-stoked fires blends with the aromas of sizzling chicken, bubbling burgoo and roasting mutton to complete the festival atmosphere…”)
One of the most interesting Eat Feed podcasts I’ve listened to so far though, has been one in which Bramley interviews William Grimes, The New York Times food writer who is working on a history of dining out in New York. Fascinating facts from Grimes:
• Historically, the waters of the marshlands and wetlands around New York teemed with oysters and an abundance of game – woodcock, snipe and plover – which were standard fare in restaurants of the time.
• Between about 1850 and 1860, the main types of restaurant in New York were oyster related – oyster cellars, oyster houses, oyster palaces. “Everyone was equal before the oyster,” Grimes says.

• The Fulton Market near Brooklyn Bridge had famous oyster restaurants which were frequented by foreign visitors, including Charles Dickens, who mentioned oysters, and oyster stalls, more than once in his novels:

“Kit, walking into an oyster-shop as bold as if he lived there, and not so much as looking at the counter or the man behind it, led his party into a box – a private box, fitted up with red curtains, white table-cloth, and cruet- stand complete – and ordered a fierce gentleman with whiskers, who acted as waiter and called him, him Christopher Nubbles, 'sir,' to bring three dozen of his largest-sized oysters, and to look sharp about it! … (he) presently came running back with the newest loaves, and the freshest butter, and the largest oysters, ever seen. … the greatest miracle of the night was little Jacob, who ate oysters as if he had been born and bred to the business – sprinkled the pepper and the vinegar with a discretion beyond his years – and afterwards built a grotto on the table with the shells.”
(The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens)

If the Eat Feed podcast on the research of William Grimes is upbeat and curious, an Australian Radio National podcast – also on the subject of oysters – is sobering, alarming.
In Radio Eye, "The Oyster Farmers" looks at the tradition of oyster farming on the beautiful Hawkesbury River north of Sydney. For 150 years, farmers have harvested the famous Sydney Rock Oysters in these waters, but now, a virus is killing the oysters – and the farmers’ livelihoods.
It’s no surprise to hear that they believe that the virus is a symptom of a river under stress.

Postscript 1: In my searches tonight, I’ve just come upon another relevant podcast: I haven’t had time to listen to it yet, but NPR interviews Mark Kurlansky, the author of Cod, Salt and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, which apparently covers some of the New York-oyster territory that Grimes’s research has touched on.
Postscript 2: If you don’t have an iPod or other MP3 player, you can still download podcasts from websites and listen to them through your computer.

Fish Trails Part II

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is a recipe I’ve wanted to share for some time. It starts to inch me back towards the reason I started this whole thing – to explore, in a non-scientific way, recipes full of flavour but light on fat and carbohydrates. And the broken record? I’ve realised that this is not the first time I’ve gone for the fish-olive-potato combination. And it’s not the first time either, that I’ve raved about John Torode's book Mezzo, where I found this lovely recipe (I’ve pulled back quite a bit on the amount of olive oil listed in Torode’s recipe*).

You can be the judge of the dish – I think it opens up a host of possibilities. Use snapper or blue-eye instead of red mullet, which is a bit of a bugger to fillet and pin-bone (unless you have a great fishmonger); or add or subtract from the ingredients used in the stewy component – as long as you end up with a moist, richly flavoured version of some description. And, it’s appropriate timing to include a mention of an article in The Washington Post that summarises two new reports that both conclude that the health benefits of regularly eating fish outweigh any risk from consuming contaminants such as mercury. Given my last post though, it was interesting to read in the article of environmentalists’ concerns “about the impact the findings could have on marine life if people worldwide try to dine on seafood twice a week, because there isn't enough to go around”. On that subject, I’m pretty sure that red mullet, or rouget, isn’t heading for extinction just yet.

Red Mullet with Potatoes and Black Olives
Serves 2

3 tablespoons olive oil
200g new potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 2.5cm chunks
200g peeled tomatoes, chopped
100g small onions, halved top to bottom
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs sage
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
30g black olives (I used little Ligurian olives)
40g flat-leafed parsley, stems removed
4 fillets of red mullet, pin-boned

Preheat the oven to 190ºC (375ºF). Warm 2 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy casserole over a medium heat. Add the potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, thyme and sage, and bring to the boil. Season well and simmer for 5 minutes, watching that the mixture doesn’t start to burn or stick to the casserole. Cover then, and cook in the oven for about an hour, or until the potatoes are cooked through. (Do not stir, as this will break up the vegetables.) Allow to cool slightly, then add the olives and parsley.
Heat a griddle or frying pan over a high heat until smoking. Season the red mullet fillets and drizzle with the remaining olive oil. Place the fillets skin side down on the griddle for 30 seconds, then flip them over and cook for a further 30 seconds. (The fillets will be very thin and shouldn’t require very much more time than this.)
Spoon the vegetable mixture into shallow bowls and criss-cross two fillets of mullet on top of each bowl.
* NB: the original recipe called for more than double the amount of olive oil I’ve used above. Instead, I’ve used more tomato to keep the mixture moist as it cooks.

Fish Trails

I started this post with the intention of ending it with a recipe. But I’ve got carried away and tied up in knots with a multitude of strands and thoughts. The recipe will have to come tomorrow. (Besides, I’m still determining whether or not it proposes eating an endangered species.)
I’m on a mission – determined to find out what I can about the fish species I should and shouldn’t eat if I want my niece to live in a biodiverse world. Time and again in the past few weeks, various articles, broadcasts, websites etc have hammered me over the head about the gravity of this subject.
It all started with a podcast from Eat Feed, in which Charles Clover, the author of The End of the Line: How Over-Fishing is Changing the World and What We Eat (revised 2006 edition, New Press) is interviewed:
He says:

“Imagine what people would say if a band of hunters strung a mile of net between two immense all-terrain vehicles and dragged it at speed across the plains of Africa … this fantastical assemblage like something from a Mad Max movie would scoop up everything in its way … predators such as lions and cheetahs, lumbering endangered herbivores such as rhinos and elephants; herds of impala and wildebeest, family groups of warthog and wild dog. Pregnant females would be swept up and churned along with only the smallest juveniles being able to wriggle through the mesh. Left behind is a strangley bedraggled landscape resembling a harrowed field … there are no markets for about a third of the animals they have caught because they don’t taste good or simply are too small or too squashed. This efficient but highly unselective way of killing animals is known as trawling. It is practiced the world over every day from the Barents Sea in the Arctic to the shores of Antarctica and from the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the central Pacific to the temperate waters off Cape Cod.”

Two Ways with Tomatoes

The heaters are on high. I’m speaking in a voice that I hope sounds husky like Dietrich but fear sounds more nasal like Kermit. The tissue box beside me is emptying as quickly as the bin fills. I’m sneezing. I’m about to return to the kitchen, on my mother’s long-distance urging, to heat equal quantities of honey, lemon and olive oil. (Should I add rum?) I’ve checked the forecast and there’s snow in the mountains and frost in the morning.
Yet for dinner, I’ve just thrilled to the best tomatoes I’ve found in a year. All through our southern hemisphere summer, as my carefully tended tomato vines struggled, then died, I searched. The tomato specialist at the Queen Victoria markets. Through farmers’ markets and caring greengrocers. Nothing. I gave up on finding a decent tomato. Then, on a drive out of town on the weekend, the car heater on, there they were. At a roadside fruit barn, little hydroponic tomatoes that could almost have been mistaken for cherry tomatoes. They looked divine. Smelt divine. They danced in that big wooden crate as though they were characters in a children's picture book begging to come home with me. It seemed wrong and I hesitated but the decision was out of my hands.
Two lovely, simple dinners. No recipes needed.

1. Roasted Rare Salmon with a Simple Salad: The salad can include fresh sliced tomatoes, Lebanese cucumber, Ligurian olives, shaved fennel, freshly ground black pepper, sea salt, excellent olive oil. Preheat your oven to 200°degrees. Brush each side of a fillet of salmon (one fillet per person) with good olive oil and season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bake for 5 minutes if you like rare salmon. More if you like it cooked through. Toss the salad ingredients together. Perhaps squeeze a little lemon juice over the top of it all.
2. Summer Tomato Pasta: Fundamentally, it’s hot pasta with an uncooked tomato sauce. To make your tomato sauce, roughly dice tomatoes (perhaps 200g per person), toss, generously, in the best olive oil you can afford (perhaps 2-3 tablespoons per person), add crushed garlic, freshly ground black pepper and sea salt to taste, scatter in torn fresh basil leaves. When pasta is cooked (you should use the best durum wheat spaghetti you can find and cook it in frenzied boiling salted water), drain, and toss with the tomato mixture. Sprinkle with real Parmigiano Reggiano.