The Elegant Sufficiency

How Not to Open a Sea Urchin

So there's this bloke at work. I could tell he was special from the start. Tall and dark, yes, but it was the ginger and fig jam that first made me sit up straighter in my swivel-chair. He’d made it himself from a Sean Moran recipe we’d published. Brought it into the office for me — a little Vegemite jar of jam stashed in his bike-courier bag.
When he brought in his homemade lime pickles in a red-lidded honey jar I didn’t know what to say, where to look, so I straightened my Post-it note pile instead and sharpened some pencils.
I knew then that there would be pain ahead.
It arrived yesterday.

This time, there were two old Tupperware boxes in a supermarket plastic bag. Six sea urchins. Glistening black spiky creatures that set my heart racing. Gathered the day before from rockpools at a south-eastern beach. How did he know that I’d sell my soul and more for a sea urchin.
Mr Rockpool himself offered advice via Twitter. “take sharp scissors & cut about 2 inch circle around the opening. tip the water out and remove tongues and devour. Yum!” he wrote. “it is the bottom with what I call the mouth. it is the only place were the spines aren't covering. The bum i guess..ha ha”.
Two tweets, and I had a plan. Seemed straightforward enough.

The credits were rolling on Four Corners and my kitchen was strewn with broken black sea urchin spikes by the time I had worked out how best to thank Mr Perry for his advice.
Can I tell you a few home truths, Mr Perry: pink rubber washing-up gloves don’t ease the pain. Regular kitchen scissors won’t do the job. How-to-open-sea-urchin videos on YouTube, even playing on a laptop perched on the dish drainer as you tackle your urchin, won’t illuminate the process. You are courting disaster if you try to use your biggest and best chef's knife. Small sea urchins, less-than-palm-sized urchins, don’t have any roe. Even if you manage to crack the hard urchin shell to which the spikes are attached you will have made a god-awful mess — and those intoxicating little slivers of ochreish, tongue-shaped roe are still impossible to get at.

I persisted (by now, Q&A had started; I was briefly distracted by the glory of Malcolm Turnbull’s black leather jacket) and, slowly, with much prising and swearing, the two largest yielded up their treasures. Covered in gunk. Then, a painstaking process to wipe away sand and grit and other unpleasantness.

It wasn’t much but certainly enough to make a little pasta dish. Tomato, lemon zest, chilli, garlic, roughly following a New York Times recipe. Divine.
And the bloke at work? He’s let me in on this urchin-hunting-ground location. I don’t need him anymore.

A Kitchen Garden

"There's something about a simple fire, a humble billy and the prospect of a cup of tea ... it puts us out of sync," John Doyle just mused in Two in the Top End. Watch it. He’s sitting next to that simple fire, opposite Tim Flannery, 2007 Australian of the Year, author of The Weathermakers. Their banter, to me, epitomises that lovely, wicked, laconic Australian sense of humour. In the midst of big fake crocs, empty gorges, gargantuan zinc mines and far-stretching beaches, they casually, idly, almost obliquely, muse about the sustainability and the reasonableness of our lives.
Meanwhile, what a treasure Vaucluse House is. A long day on a photo shoot in the 19th Century mansion's kitchen garden, a very fine box of vegetables-that-were-props the reward at the end of the day. (Alarming, no?, that a pregnant Vaucluse staffer shadowing us only eats frozen vegetables — the real thing is too much trouble…) Golden beets, baby beets, baby turnips, silverbeet, leeks, salad onions, artichokes, sweet corn, peas, radishes, mulberries (I haven’t eaten them since I was a child in my great-grandmother's backyard when we took the leaves home for our silkworms, faces and fingers stained beyond repair), rhubarb, strawberries (all collected from a wholesaler this morning).
And, consequently, in my kitchen tonight, the madness continued. A bit too much washing up for one. In the produce-prop box there were zucchini flowers too, and fresh horseradish, and I nabbed it all and remembered my brother’s zucchini flowers.
No recipe but I fiddled with a filling of ricotta, cream, grated horseradish, grated parmesan, chopped anchovies, parsley, ham, pepper and salt. Think that was it. Gorgeous. Batter was a bit clunky … found the recipe online and ad-libbed because of absence of corn starch in my cupboard … but I ate contentedly with Doyle and Flannery as company, then went back for dessert: poached rhubarb, mulberries and a little apple with organic cream. A meal fit for a King. But bloody hell, where is he?

Otways Treasures

From George Biron's Sunnybrae restaurant and cooking school blog:

"The first truffles grown in the Otways are here, such excitement ... 3kg so far, the largest harvest in Victoria as far as I know..."

From John Lethlean's Age Epicure Espresso column:

"In true French tradition, the Rides have trained their pig — Mademoiselle — to sniff out the truffles."

From George Biron in Epicure:

"This is a love story — no investment prospectus, no projected yields, no promises of a tax break — just passion, hard work and a love of the garden and the table."

From chef Sean Connolly at Astral:

Truffle sandwiches on brown bread. Brilliant.

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.

Happiness is...

Happiness is only ever as far away as a David Jones food hall (think Dean & DeLuca, think Peck) ... and Sydney's is inestimably better than Melbourne's. In the face of that wicked abundance, what do I buy? My comfort food — weisswurst (to be eaten with my own tomato relish and a baked potato and green beans for dinner), and cognac pâté to be taken to my brother's place tomorrow night (if I don't midnight-snack on it before then).
In the face of jamon and wagyu and you name it, that's about all my indecisiveness could settle on as I lurked and swooned in that basement on the corner of Market and Castlereagh. (And when I should have been Christmas shopping.)

Sydney Discoveries

I’m privileged to have a very close contact who works at the swish Sydney city restaurant est and who suggested I stop by after work last week to say hello, sit in the bar area, read a newspaper and enjoy some oysters. Oh, the joy...

• A dozen Port Stephens oysters. Sydney rock oysters … in heaven, these native oysters would be eaten for breakfast.
• Chef Peter Doyle’s extraordinary squab dish — roasted, boned squab, white asparagus, morels and chanterelles. A dish of perfection in its simplicity and immaculate ingredients. Brilliantly pink meat, a little liverish in the nicest possible way; pan juices, nothing else.
• White sesame oil: after some online searching, it seems Chef Doyle is one of the few to be using this oil, for which the seeds are apparently untoasted … at est, he puts it into a dish of yellow fin tuna sashimi, cucumber, wasabi, coriander and ponzu. Can find no evidence of other chefs using it, except Chicago’s Charlie Trotter. Found some references to his dish "Young-Coconut Pad Thai With Almond Chile Sauce” (from Raw, by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein) . I didn’t try Doyle’s dish but will next time. My contact tells me the white sesame oil is available at Tokyo Mart (83 Sailors Bay Road, Northbridge). Given the overpoweringly hefty flavours of normal sesame oil, it might be a great discovery. Has anyone used it?
• It’s better for all of us if I don’t share my sketches with you. Just tried to draw this, but failed miserably. My words will have to do the job instead: leaving est, entranced by a “floral display” — a single fresh orchid flower in a test tube, the test tube sitting in a small timber picture frame, the frame on a wall near a lift. Gorgeous. Not so my sketch.

Posts about Potatoes

• Financial Times' writer Claire Wrathall explores the big business of heritage potatoes in the UK.
• Paul McCartney demonstrates how to make mashed potatoes on YouTube. (Why?)
• Lucy on Nourish Me offers a great potato soup recipe.
• Amy Sherman on Cooking with Amy looks at a new book, Yummy Potatoes, by Marlena Spieler.
• Garlic-roasted potatoes on Cooking for Engineers.
• Antique potato recipes on The Companion to the Old Foodie.
  Rosa Jackson picks up some luxury spring potatoes at a French market.
• Stone Soup's Mashed Potato Extravaganza (Jules tests out different potato varieties).
• Weird Al Yankovic hilariously channels Eminem performing Couch Potato on YouTube.

Guess what sort of weekend I had...

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?

Choked Up

So tonight, I spent an hour with four artichokes.
As my colleague John Lethlean admitted in his recent Age column, I've also avoided bringing artichokes into my kitchen. First and only other artichoke experiment resulted in them totally collapsing on me as I pared away, and pared away.
Yesterday though, they looked so tantalising in the fruit and vegetable shop ...
And so tonight, I spent an hour with four artichokes. Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cookbook spread out before me. Studying her illustrations, lemon halves and acidulated water everywhere.
And it all seemed to go really rather well. Rubbed a paste of mint, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper outside, and inside where the nasty choke once was. Laid them in a saucepan with olive oil and water. Wet cloth over the top, then the lid. Marcella told me to cook for up to 40 minutes. The aroma? Magic... The apartment filled with a divine, garlicky-minty fragrance and I was happy.
I returned to the distressing online search for a decent and affordable new apartment to rent in Sydney. (To afford an inner-city place remotely equivalent to home now, I'll have to live on potatoes and cabbage, darn holes in my socks, turn collars inside out or whatever you do with them, abandon shoe shopping, French cheese shopping ...)
My attention wandered from Surry Hills to Bondi, Glebe to Alexandria. My attention was not on the stove.
Not a mistake a smart cook would make. (Not a mistake the chefs who will be hired by Jamie Oliver to cook at his new UK high street chain of "neighbourhood" restaurants serving "authentic Italian" food would make.)
But knee-deep in real-estate anxiety, I let my artichokes, the hour-long artichokes, burn dry. Mush they were, mush.
And my hands lemon-shrivelled and my artichoke-confidence shattered.

The Headlines

• Age Good Food Guide awards last night. Best bit was the Pol Roger and the mini chicken sandwiches. Difficult to be frank when you work for the company. As with last year, I gave thanks I was in the audience, not on the stage.
• Ennui has lifted: no choice in that matter, as another deadline looms. Hey — you Australians, help me. Need your insights/reviews/opinions about Kath & Kim. That's my task over the next few days: to write 3000 words exploring the phenomenon of this Australian sit-com. If you have any thoughts about the first two episodes of the fourth series that have screened in the past two weeks, throw them at me. And tell me: what does the show say about Australia, Australians? Is this who we are? Anyone have any six-degrees-of-separation stories about Jane Turner and Gina Riley? Please share.
• After a ridiculous number of months trying to sort out a break overseas, I've booked my tickets. Not India — will try to get there next year — instead, to China's far-western Yunnan Province with a great, Mandarin-speaking friend. Mainly Lijiang. Hopefully some trekking. Can't wait. Three weeks before I leave, and counting. Any tips?
• And finally, look at this glorious vegetable. As Lucy has already discussed, it's a natural wonder (especially when you suddenly realise your diet has been alarmingly vegetable-free for days). I was hoping to do something with it for Cream Puffs in Venice's Festa Al Fresca 2007 2007 event, and I took inspiration from Jules's dish, a warm salad of lentils, cavalo nero and roasted baby onions. I followed her instructions for a confit onion dressing (brilliant), left out the roasted baby onions but added a poached egg to the top. Everything great. Except my photograph. I'm just not going to show it to you. So, all I can give you is inspiration and links. Back to the drawing board for Festa Al Fresca. What do you do with cavalo nero? I need more ... more of that virtuous feeling!

A Question About an Apple

PPS: Can anyone tell me why a Pink Lady apple bought only a week or so ago and kept in my vegetable crisper — or any apple kept for a time for that matter — would go unpleasantly greasy on the outside? I'm wondering if it has something to do with the effect of cold on a waxed apple. Just wondering. I bet Harold McGee would know.
PPPS: I have just six wondrous words for you: Marcella Hazan's Recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara. Oh my.

Egg Addiction

Leghorn eggs, plucked from under the hens at Bress Winery. Almost better than the vineyard's shiraz. Looking for a 10-step program ... for my egg addiction (poached is my poison). And the rapidly increasing problem of my coffee addiction.

Polishing Your Rice-Cooking Technique

Earlier this month, Steamy Kitchen's Jaden wrote of her rice cooker dependency: “I’ve been spoiled by my rice cooker. I don’t know how to make jasmine rice without it. The water measurements, timing and technique are totally different. I mean … I’ve never ventured outside of the ‘one-finger-push-button’ technique of the rice cooker. … How could I, a Chinese cook, mess up RICE of all things?!?!”
My comment on her rice-cooker-lament offered, for what it was worth, the rice-cooking method I’ve always used: an absorption method that my mother stumbled on in an old Indian cookbook when I was a child. Even when I lived in Hong Kong and had a tragic, two-burner stove in a kitchen the size of a bathtub, I still resisted buying a rice-cooker because of my ingrained habit of cooking rice this way.
The method works for any sort of white rice, from jasmine and basmati to plain old short grain, although not for brown (which I’m still trying to work out how to cook properly ... help ...?). It’s a method that is much the same as that used to cook a pilaf, but without the addition of other flavours. Using this method, you won’t need to wash your rice beforehand, nor drain it afterwards.
I think Jaden had success with it ... if you have rice issues, I hope it works for you too.

To cook two cups* of white rice:

• Have a kettle of boiling water on the go.
• Get a lidded saucepan ready: wrap the lid in a teatowel or piece of cloth to absorb the steam.
• Heat about 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil in the saucepan.
• When oil is hot, add 2 cups of rice and stir until rice starts to become translucent. Add four cups of boiling water to the rice in the saucepan (it should spit and spurt like crazy), then a bit of salt, stir quickly, then cover the saucepan with the cloth-covered lid.
• Turn down to a simmer and avoid lifting the lid.
  
• After 15-20 minutes, all the water will have been absorbed into the rice, which should be cooked and have beautifully separate grains. Be careful not to cook for too long, as the rice will start to stick to the bottom of the saucepan … lovely, golden and crunchy if you let it go for just a little too long, a disastrous black mess for your saucepan if you push it too far.

* The amount of water should be twice that of rice; so for one cup of rice, two cups of water, three cups of rice, six cups of water.

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.

Salt Tales

Damn, how I'd like to be able to try the seaweed-flavoured salt from the Ile de Ré on France's Atlantic coast that Rosa Jackson writes about in her new blog, Rosa Jackson (see my blog spotlight at right). I'm tasting its umami gorgeousness as I write... can I get it by mail order?

Gorgeous Things

Exhibit A

On the left, my new best friend – my precious tomato plant, my first ever. I’m still aquiver about the fact that, for the past month or so, I’ve been able to walk out to my balcony and pluck one of these divine red things off at a whim. It’s one of two plants that has thrived in a deep, oblong planter box in an intensely warm, full-western-sun spot – with a splash of water now and then and a few encouraging words. Don’t ask me what sort of tomatoes they are – I’ve long since lost the nursery’s tags. And, while their flavour is nothing special, they’re the most beautiful tomatoes I’ve ever eaten.

Exhibit B

On the right, a new discovery. I had no idea what a hazelnut looked like in its just-off-the-tree state (am I hopelessly ignorant?) ... discovered these yesterday afternoon at the largely unsung La Manna Fresh in Brunswick (407 Sydney Road). $8 a kilogram from Mansfield. Nothing like a supermarket packet hazelnut in flavour or texture – instead, they are bland with a green, fresh crunch about them. Helen Murphy, of Hazelwood Hazelnuts, tells me that they’re not from her property, but probably from another hazelnut farm not so far from her. She says it’s very European to eat hazelnuts at this stage, before they dry out, but left a while, they’ll turn into something drier and more familiar. (Apparently, imported hazelnuts can be several months old.) Finally, a web search tells me that Australia imports about 2,000 tonnes of hazelnuts a year and we have fewer than 75 hectares of commercial hazelnut trees.

Desert Island Ingredients

I'm not eating much pasta these days, especially at night (suspect I'm not alone in that) and when I do, I'm eating so much less … perhaps that behaviour is more typically Italian than eating jumbo-sized bowls as I once did? (If I go for seconds of pasta I invariably feel bloated and disgusting pretty quickly.) Still, one Italian brand or another of pasta remains a pantry staple.
I was pondering my desert-island ingredients as I prepared dinner tonight (I had Greg's ingredients on my mind ... sauerkraut for heaven’s sake??) and, despite my limited intake, pasta would still have to be there under the coconut palm with me. As would fresh chilli, lemons, olive oil, sea salt, garlic, eggs and maybe a pot or two of herbs. (I’m always curious to know what ingredients would be under other people’s coconut palms?? Please share... )
Then, into my inbox tonight, landed the regular e-letter I get from American Public Media’s Splendid Table, written by Lynne Rossetto Kasper. This one talks about the “great classic beloved by 90 percent of Italy's harried cooks” and by me – Spaghetti Aglio-Olio (garlic, olive oil and pasta, simple as that). Just had to share the tip Rossetto Kasper passes on:

“The trick is to add some water, broth, or wine just as the garlic takes on a light golden color as it sizzles in the olive oil. The liquid prevents the garlic from browning and softens and mellows the taste of the garlic, resulting in a sauce that clings nicely to the spaghetti with bits of almost delicate, nutty-tasting garlic.”

If you can bear another thing in your inbox, her e-letter frequently has some great recipes and always features Rossetto Kasper’s own really helpful tips.

Cherries for Aunt Mabel's Christmas Pudding

You have to wonder about glace cherries. I mean, what the hell are they? They bear absolutely no resemblance to fresh cherries. Were they ever fresh cherries? Since 1956, according to their packaging, Winn (a division of Australian Nut Processors) has been producing red glace cherries. But what the hell are glace cherries? How on earth are they made? The ingredients list tells us: “Pitted red glace cherries (95%), glucose syrup, sugar, preservatives (211), flavour, acids (296), colours (129, 122).” That suggests to me that, even at the outset of the manufacturing process, there weren’t any fresh cherries in the mix.
So how did glace cherries acquire such an exalted position. Why did Aunt Mabel – a mysterious, sepia-toned, elderly figure in my family’s past who may or may not have existed but who, very kindly, bequeathed to my grandmother, Alice, and thence to my mother, Robin, a very very marvellous Christmas pudding recipe in spidery handwriting – choose to use glace cherries, which clearly weren’t ever fresh cherries, in that famed Christmas pudding recipe?
And why, in Favourite Recipes of America – Salads, Including Appetizers (Favourite Recipes Press, 1968, Louisville Kentucky) – do glace cherries appear in a Cranberry-Pineapple Salad on page 49, an Angel Salad on page 50 (never mind “Barbara’s Salad” on page 50 which calls for “miniature marshmallows”), the Hawaiian Tuna Salad on page 192, and the Sweet Macaroni Salad on page 205 (courtesy of Mrs Maurice W. Dunn, Officers Wives’ Club, Fort Riley, Kan.).

Okay, I’m taking the piss just a bit here. I’m sure the mysterious Aunt Mabel, and Mrs Maurice W. Dunn of Fort Riley, Kansas, had the very best intentions. But 1968 is only 38 years ago. It’s extraordinary how far we’ve come, and yet how much we cling to the past. I wouldn’t dream of making any other Christmas pudding than Aunt Mabel’s. Her pudding, glace cherries and all, is as much a part of the family as my new niece, Marni, 10 months, who’s walking now and creating terror, and for whom I’m going to spend my Christmas digging sandcastles.

A Past Life

10 Things I Don’t Miss About Being a Restaurant Reviewer

1. The four out of five average (or worse) meals a restaurant reviewer has to eat.
2. Sitting in the toilet for suspicious amounts of time scribbling notes.
3. The struggle to write something, anything, about the mass of colourless, just acceptable restaurants out there. (So much easier to write either a scathing or a superlative review.)
4. Fuzzy memory syndrome: did Restaurant X have polished timber floorboards or carpet? What the hell was that garnish on the hand-picked crab and lobster salad with green mango foam? Were the waiters in Armani or Helmut Lang?
5. Ruining yet another restaurant’s crisp white tablecloth with pen marks by attempting to write notes covertly under the table without watching.
6. That morning-after-beached-whale feeling after what might be the third or fourth rich, three-course meal, with wine, in a week.
7. Being recognised and either a) having to put up with some gasbag proprietor pulling up a chair and turning a setting for two into one for three; b) getting sent out a procession of unordered dishes that ‘the chef thought you might like to try’ and then being told ‘the meal is on us’ and having to fight to pay the check as ethical reviewers do.
8. The impossibility of conducting a conversation with your guest on the other side of the table while simultaneously writing notes describing the angle the lamb fillet has been sliced at, the texture of the mushroom soy dressing, the flavour of the saffron pappardelle, the mood of the dining room, the degree of stubble on the waiter’s chin.
9. Never having a night in to cook my own food, with my own hands, with ingredients I have bought.
10. Never being invited to friends’ homes for a meal.

It came flooding back last night. Melbourne held its gala, much-hyped, anxiously awaited restaurant awards, which bounce off the contents of the influential annual Good Food Guide, sponsored by the city’s broadsheet newspaper, The Age. The egos, the strutting, the looking-over-shoulders, the drunks, the interminable speeches that no one listened to (or could hear anyway), the so-so sparkling wine, the back-stabbing, the gossip. And the old faces, like stepping into a dusty photo album.
I edited the book for three years until 2001, twice with co-editors and once on my own and it nearly killed me. Last night, two former colleagues, the Melbourne versions of Frank Bruni and Ruth Reichl, except recognisable, stood on the stage in their Sunday best and handed out the awards. I nibbled on canapés, and sipped my wine, and listened to the chefs and hangers-on around me carry on, and thought about restaurant reviewing, and reviewers, and the ethical minefields they trip through, and then my mind wandered off to more interesting things.

Such as how to improve my photography (and styling abilities). I’m often constrained by the need to photograph at night thanks to my day job, and I’ve quickly discovered that dishes that might not have a strong shape or a central focus point, such as a bowl of pasta, or a risotto, or a curry, need to acquire one. If I were to reshoot this dish, for example, I might consider leaving aside some of the trout, cutting it in larger pieces and splaying it across the top of the salad. Perhaps I might also add a handful of leaves such as cress, or rucola. Any other photography-improvement tips will be most gratefully received.
So to the salad. It’s incredibly simple and tasty and, after a couple of indulgent detours, brings me back on the course of exploring how I can eat well and eat wonderful flavours without increasing the number that shows on the scales.
I asked Greg, the chef who was once more than just a good friend, about burghul. He spat out the Arabic name for it that sounded something like “burrual” and said that it’s important to look out for “undesirables” such as weevils or clusters of eggs in your burghul before buying it. “Teta, my grandmother, would buy fresh wheat and cook it, and dry it outside on blankets in the sun,” he recalled. “Then she’d smash and thrash it in the mortar and pestle.” There are, I have belatedly discovered, two types of burghul: coarse and fine. The coarse variety is usually reserved for pilafs and stuffings – it needs to be cooked. The fine variety doesn’t need to be cooked and is used for tabbouleh or a salad such as this.

Cucumber, Ocean Trout Sashimi and Burghul Salad
Serves 4 (as an entrée or part of a meal)

½ cup fine burghul (cracked wheat)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp allspice
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 fresh birds-eye chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
400g piece ocean trout, skinned, pin-boned and cut into 1cm cubes
½ cucumber, seeded and cut into 1cm cubes
2 green onions, finely chopped
¼ cup flat-leafed parsley, finely chopped
¼ cup coriander, finely chopped
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Cover burghul with enough cold water to cover and leave for about 10 minutes. Drain  and squeeze out as much extra water as you can. In a large bowl, combine burghul with remaining ingredients, adding more lemon juice if needed. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Divide salad among plates and serve immediately.

Three Ways with Tomatoes

Distressingly entangled in a nasty deadline that can't be avoided.
For now, I think I might let someone else have the floor in my place.
My good friend, chef Greg Malouf, responded to my last Two-Ways-With-Tomatoes item with an idea that deserves 15 minutes of fame.

"May I sugest the final way with tomatoes is to buy any RIPE honest tomato ... cut in half through the top, place on a cake rack with a few drops of pomegranate molasses, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, crushed black pepper, a few thyme leaves and half-dry in a very cool oven (60 degrees or less) for six hours. (The result is) brilliant in risottos, pastas, salads with fried bread (fatouche) ... etc."

(Greg Malouf, July '06)