The Elegant Sufficiency

Memories Are Made of This

Here's one that goes straight into the Favourite Food Memories file: a wondrous, mouthful of a dish at Pearl.
Sukiyaki of Moondara beef with tofu, shiitake, enoki and daikon, shiso and chrysanthemum shoots, quail egg and a dashi broth added at the table.
Chef Geoff Lindsay's carefully anotated menu notes that "Moondara beef is from Tajima strain grass fed Wagyu beef grown on the Prentice family farm at Moondara in the Gippsland Mountain Rivers District". (For the non-Australians among you, we can't walk five paces here without stumbling over a piece of Wagyu: chefs are going crazy for it.)
Damn, that beef was silken (I was ever so happy to hear some know-it-all in the dining room pipe up at one point during the special dinner and claim that Wagyu beef has good fats, not bad). Waiter poured over a fine broth, lots of shoots everywhere, cubes of daikon, and the sweetest little quail egg on top.

A Bit of Brisket

Think I might have to reconsider my shopping habits. Asked for beef brisket at SIX Queen Victoria Market stalls this morning and not one had it. A phone call to the wonderful opera-playing Carlton butcher, Donati's and, bingo!

Also on the shopping list:
5 squids
1 whole ocean trout
1  bratwurst
kaffir lime leaves
lemongrass
red shallots
garlic
galangal
mint
coriander
Thai basil
Peanuts
Scud chillies

...

It's obvious isn't it?
Stay tuned... more to come...

The Comfort Food Cure

On the weekend, I wanted meatballs.
Tonight, it was pumpkin soup.
I could lie and say it’s the weather that’s sent me in search of comfort food, but there are other reasons.
Tonight, so much thinking – about old, old friendships, and friendships that disappoint, and moving on, and letting go, and forgiving, and accepting that I’m no angel either. Thoughts and tears dripping into a baking tray of caramelised pumpkin and pear. My hands smarting, but masochistically satisfied as they stripped pumpkin and pear skin away from the burning, oozing orange and white flesh.
More tears into my roasted pumpkin and pear soup through the ABC’s extraordinary, tragic, heart-warming Choir of Hard Knocks. The soup, a sweet, deeply flavoured tonic courtesy of Nourish Me. (You did, dear Lucy!)
On Sunday, I dithered over the slow, repetitive, soothing squelching of a cold pork mince mixture through my fingers and thought and thought. (I’ve created a new Playlist in ITunes called “TinklyAsian” and the sound of the pippa in songs like Wild Geese Rest in the Sandy Wilderness, Missing an Old Friend and Autumn Moon on a Placid Lake fed my melancholy squelching more than adequately.) The result, a triumph – moist, lemony and thoroughly restorative meatballs.
But the real cure? It’s all about getting your hands dirty.

Lemony Pork Meatballs
Inspired by a recipe in Cucina Siciliana, by Clarissa Hyman (Conran Octopus, 2002)
Serves 2

280g pork mince
1tbsp olive oil
1 brown onion, diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 slice of prosciutto, cut in small pieces
40g parmesan, grated
50g fresh breadcrumbs
4tbsp parsley, chopped
zest and juice of 1 lemon
salt
1 egg
25g flour
1tbsp olive oil
1 glass white wine
hot water
4 bay leaves torn
lemon slice and bay leaves to garnish

Heat olive in a frying pan and gently fry onion and garlic until softened, being careful not to let the garlic brown. Add prosciutto and cook for another few minutes.
Combine mince, onion and prosciutto mixture, parmesan, breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon zest and salt in a bowl. Add the egg and use your hands to mix together, squeezing it through your fingers.
Roll small amounts of the mixture into balls between the palms of your hands and lay out on a plate.
Heat second tablespoon of olive oil in a non-stick frying pan large enough to take all the meatballs. Fry the meatballs over medium heat for about 10 minutes, shaking them around the pan until brown.
Add the wine and turn up the heat, shaking the pan so the wine distributes itself fairly evenly. Let the alcohol burn off for a few minutes.
Pour in enough hot water to cover the meatballs. Add the lemon juice and torn bay leaves and leave to bubble over a gentle heat until the sauce has reduced by half.
Remove the meatballs with a slotted spoon and place in a serving dish. Spoon over the sauce if desired.

More Than One New Me

I’ve been fashioning a sleeker new me. More than one sleeker new me in fact.
Sleek New Me Number 1 (above right) is an hour-glass-waisted brunette with impeccable, if conservative, taste. The decision to give myself an oblong face and full lips was simple, but it was a tougher call to decide between Mistress Juliya hair or the Layered look (the Layered look won out.)
Sleek New Me Number 2 (above left) is an altogether saucier thing, with Microbraids, pierced belly and Samba Dress. Oh yes, when it came to the creation of New Me Number 2, I went to town.
I’ve been wasting time at Meez.com, where you can “create unique 3D avatars that animate in minutes”. (Thanks to Meez.com, I’ve discovered you use avatars as “your personal ID on instant messaging, blogs, MySpace and other sites” – the Me Generation mentioned in the New York magazine article of my last post would roll their eyes at my Gen-X ignorance.) On Meez.com, you (and that includes you, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John…) choose whether you want an oblong or round face, your skin tone, hair style and dress sense; choose a theme – Brazil couture, Heiress, Sexy or Preppy; choose a background – Spiritual, Urban, Parties.
And I’ve been wasting more time at Style.com, picking up a head full of avaricious steam and a new wardrobe full of marvellous frocks and coats and shifts and pants – by designers such as Dries Van Noten (below left), Chloe, Marni, Donna Karan, Jil Sander, Bottega Veneta (below right).

Style.com, very courteously, allows you to create Lookbooks of the fashion items you covet – couture and ready-to-wear, shoes and bags and accessories. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in my Lookbook by now I’d say (my codename there is "Annie99" if you're remotely interested.)
But if you must know, it’s Galliano's Spring 2007, Japanese-inspired collection for Dior (below) that has me really hot under my sad, non-couture collar. You wouldn’t wear the creations of course, but I could feast my eyes on them all day – it’s art, I say.

My mucking around online has been a bunch of fun, but it hasn’t helped me feel anymore content with the shape of my body nor the contents of my wardrobe.
Spain can send skinny shop-store mannequins packing; actor Kate Winslet can defend her curves as “natural, womanly and real” and pick up an apology and damages from Grazia magazine for claiming she visited a diet doctor to slim down; Dove can wage its Campaign for Real Beauty for a century; and "new research" can reveal that models are lonely, unhappy and have lower life satisfaction than people in other careers. But none of it is going to change the fact that most women and, I’d hazard a guess, more than a few men, want to look more like someone else. (OK, maybe not more like their Meez.com avatars.)
Where, I wonder, does this all lead? To a society ever more afflicted by eating disorders, spending ever more on cosmetic surgery, and ever more materialistic. Or is there a tipping point somewhere along the line soon, when we’ll all throw our hands in the air and say enough is enough, no more, I am what I am. Perhaps that’s just called growing old.
And today’s recipe? It’s a little something that might, marginally, be considered Elegant Light (if you pull back on the olive oil, discard the chicken skin and turn your back on a carb companion); something that might please my trainer; something with such brilliant flavours that they might keep my mind off the fact that I’m determined not to eat bread this week – and determined to see a different, lower number on the scales in a week’s time. Guess I’m not old just yet.

Karen Martini's Syrian Chicken

2tsp sea salt
2tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
1 tsp ground turmeric
size 14-16 free-range chicken, cut into eight pieces
100ml olive oil
2 brown onions, thickly sliced
100g fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks
5 cloves garlic, bruised with the back of a knife
2 small red chillies, split
1 750ml bottle of tomato sugo
2 pinches of saffron threads
½ tsp cumin seeds
5 sprigs thyme
1 lemon, juiced and zest finely grated
2 tbsp honey
100g currants
½ bunch coriander leaves
couscous or rice to serve

Combine salt, cumin, cinnamon, pepper and turmeric in a large bowl. Add chicken pieces and cover them with the spice mix.
Heat olive oil in a large, heavy-based pan and brown chicken on each side. Remove from pan and fry onions, ginger, garlic and chillies in the oily-spicy residue for a few minutes. You may need to add a little more oil. Add sugo, saffron, cumin seeds and thyme and cook for a little longer.
Return chicken to pan and add lemon juice and zest, honey and currants. If necessary, cover with a little water so chicken is just covered with liquid.
Simmer, covered, for 10 minutes, then remove lid and simmer for another 20 minutes until chicken is cooked and sauce has thickened just a little.
Stir in coriander and serve with a starch, if you must.

Easter Lamb and the Nazi Daughter

Is it OK to bully and cajole and nag my father? Am I turning into a Nazi-ish, nightmare of a daughter?
Have been in Queensland staying with my (very disorganised) mother and father since Good Friday: I’ve sorted through yet another overflowing box of his papers – receipts, bills, newspaper clippings, diaries, bank statements, ancient architects’ plans, correspondence – to make sure there’s nothing that needs attention. I’ve dragged Dad out on three good power-walks, twice up the torturous 226 steps at the end of Sunshine Beach. I’ve listened to Handel’s messiah on television, reluctantly. I’ve had a couple of delicious afternoon naps on a deck chair. I’ve signed them up for cable television, so when Dad is tired or lazy or not feeling so good he can watch the History Channel, the Biography channel, BBC World. I’ve had several gin and tonics. I’ve created an “Urgent” folder of things that need dealing with tomorrow before I head home. I’ve given my gambling mother twenty bucks to try and win me some money today on the Doncaster Cup (she’s spending the day at the TAB; I’ve told her not to bother coming home if she doesn’t collect). I’ve pushed my groaning body through its first yoga in months. And I’ve lectured Dad about getting himself back to the gym and to the weekly yoga class he does like a fish out of water with a bunch of well-groomed Noosa ladies; to do some volunteer work; to set himself tasks each day to conquer; to attempt to write some articles for the local paper.

No Magic Fix
After a month in hospital, resting and being treated for severe depression, he’s home and better, much better. To have imagined though, as perhaps I did, that it would be a magic fix to restore him to perfect mental health was naïve. And there’s still no resolution as to why he passed out a few days after he was released from hospital – more doctors appointments and tests to come on that, plus a looming PSA test that he considers the biggest concern of all.
So I fret about his pallor, his aimlessness, his silences, his lack of motivation, how quick to temper he is. And I lecture. It may be a habit, God forbid, that I’ve picked up from my mother; it may be the only way I know how to deal with it all – with the awful fact of his ill-health, with the fact that I feel too young to have to be worrying about this stuff. I know I have to start compartmentalising it all in my head for my own sanity and my own productivity. And besides, how useful is long-distance lecturing anyway?
But perhaps all I need to do is cook more, to chop and dice and sift and stir my way into that magical meditative state I find so soothing. Haven’t spent too much time with an apron strapped on during this trip, but when I sign off here, I’ll head into the kitchen (if the deck chair’s siren call isn’t more powerful). There’s snapper + accoutrements for dinner and a cake to bake.

Easter Lamb
And my sole cooking effort for the Easter weekend? A slow-cooked shoulder of lamb drawn from a recipe published on the Melbourne blog Tinto y Blanco, the blog of Spanish wine lover Dave Worthington. First time I cooked the recipe in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago it was so much more brilliant – perhaps the Queen Vic Markets' lamb was superior to that of the Noosa butcher – but my parents loved my second attempt yesterday (and the roast potatoes I put with it).
Lamb shoulder is a new discovery for me, so I’d love to hear your recipe suggestions. I haven’t spent much time looking but love the sound of a recipe for roast shoulder of lamb stuffed with saffron rice that Moro: the Cookbook shares (by Sam and Sam Clark, Ebury Press, 2001). In the meantime, Dave's Spanish roast lamb is more than satisfactory. And my Dad loved it.

Spanish Roast Lamb

1.5kg of lamb shoulder, deboned and rolled
a good handful (about half a bunch) fresh thyme, woodiest stalks removed
2tsp smoked Spanish paprika
2 cloves garlic
2tsp rock salt
juice of two lemons
½ cup olive oil

In a mortar and pestle, pound thyme, paprika, garlic and salt until well mixed, although still a little rough. Add the lemon juice and mix into a paste. Add oil and mix until combined.
Rub the mixture over the lamb (if your shoulder has come unrolled, rub some of the mixture on the inside of the shoulder before rolling and tying it yourself). Marinate the lamb in the fridge for two hours – or overnight if you can.
Tinto y Blanco’s Dave Worthington suggests using a Weber barbecue to slow roast the shoulder for 2.5 to 3 hours on medium heat. I used my mother’s new Westinghouse oven, cooking the shoulder for about 15 minutes at 220ºC, before turning it back to about 160ºC and letting it go for another 3 hours.