The Elegant Sufficiency

Greek Hospitality

A day out of town with friends.
The destination: Rye on the Mornington Peninsula. The host's surname: Athanasopoulos. I'm 10 kilograms heavier. Mrs A. is a generous genius. At 1pm, serving lunch: salads, kebabs and these golden nuggets (dolmade imitators — zucchini flowers stuffed with short-grain rice, onion and dill, and folded in upon themselves before being baked, a little oil). At 5pm, after naps, some wondrous sweet thing of filo and custard. And then, for heaven's sake, cakes. At 5.30pm, back on the highway, nodding with sleep all the way back in the backseat.
See you in a couple of weeks.
S

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 Night to Forget

I spent most of the afternoon staring at my screen, trying to work out whether I should write about Friday night, one of the stranger and more disturbing nights of my life.
It has left me with a bad taste in my mouth and with a craving for pure things, good things, detoxifying things, and not just because the night involved a rich Chinese meal at the Flower Drum and some single malt whisky at the Supper Club. (Flower Drum=a gradually dimming star of Melbourne’s restaurant firmament that was once considered the best Chinese restaurant in the southern hemisphere; the Supper Club=very-late-night, leather-lounged, sybaritic city institution of cigars, fine French wine and misbehaviour. ... ahem, some of which, in the past, has been my own.)
My conclusion is that I can’t tell this story: I want it to be a distant memory as soon as possible; it involves appalling, unbelievable ignorance and racism; I can’t tell it without seriously questioning an old friend’s judgment; it casts a very poor light on a certain breed of Australian men; and it would require using vile language.
I’m also troubled by my own handling of the situation.
My intention in even mentioning this is not to tease, simply to purge.
I’ve detoxified today with a long ride on my new pushbike (now I hadn't told you about that, had I!?); a stop-off at Dench bakery for grain bread; a bowl of the most magnificent strawberries; more oolong tea than you can poke a stick at; and a plate of steamed vegetables drizzled with a vinaigrette and served with toasted almonds. 
I may be starting to feel better.
I may also be reconsidering staying out past midnight in the future.

Cleansing Vegetables with Vinaigrette and Almonds
(based on a Jill Dupleix dish published in The Age)
Serves 1

1tbsp almonds
4 asparagus spears
3 Dutch baby carrots
100g green beans
100g sugar snap peas
1 baby bok choy
3 stalks of broccolini
½ bulb small fennel
2tbsp olive oil
1tbsp lemon juice
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
80g fetta (optional)

Get a big pot of cold salted water on to the stove and bring to the boil. Toast the almonds in a small pan, watching carefully that they don’t burn.
Wash vegetables. Snap the ends of the asparagus; scrub or peel carrots and halve lengthways; tail beans; remove the ends of the sugar snap peas, taking the string with them; halve bok choy lengthwise; trim broccolini stalks; and break fennel into pieces.
Mix the olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper.
Drop the carrots, beans and peas into the boiling water and cover with a lid for a couple of minutes. Add the asparagus and broccolini. After a couple of minutes, when the rest of the vegetables are tender, add the fennel. Blanch briefly.
Drain the vegetables and toss with the vinaigrette. Scatter with the almonds and crumble fetta, if using, over the top.

A Roasting

Roasted pumpkin and pear soup

If there’s a word in a recipe that catches my eye, it’s “roasted”, especially when it’s referring to a vegetable. I love what the heat of an oven can do to a vegetable, from the obvious such as potatoes, pumpkin and capsicum (which I can’t stand raw), to mushrooms, beetroot and zucchini. Went digging last night in my bookshelves to try and find some scientific explanations for this and, of course, the Curious Cook, Harold McGee, delivered. (I really haven’t explored my shiny new copy of his tome, McGee on Food & Cooking a great deal: reminds me too much of the dreaded maths and science classes that I slept through in high school.)
In his Edible Plants section, McGee writes: “… dry cooking methods remove moisture from the food surface, thus concentrating and intensifying flavour, and can heat it above the boiling point, to temperatures that generate the typical flavours and colours of the browning reaction. (See page 777)” And on page 777: “… the browning reactions produce new flavours … the simplest browning reaction is the caramelisation of sugar.” There’s more to be said, scientifically, about what happens when you stick a vegetable in an oven, but if I were to add a silly editor’s note to McGee’s margin it might be: “H.M.: this might be a good spot to suggest parents try roasting vegetables to coax their kids to eat them.” Seriously, I wonder if that might not be a key to persuading reluctant kids to eat their vegetables?
And, if you’re trying to watch your fat and carbohydrate intake, my non-scientific theory is that dishes that get a flavour spike from a roasted vegetable component rather than a dairy product or carbohydrate are a great thing to have in your repertoire. It’s amazing how special a fairly simple one-bowl-salad-meal can become if you throw in, for example, some roasted pumpkin. (I roasted some field mushrooms the other day and tossed them in a salad … great result. I’ll admit though, to some mischief – a very small amount of Bulgarian fetta was in the mix too and, of course, a streak of olive oil in the roasting.)
Coincidentally, I stumbled on an interesting website the other day: EarthShare is the site of a community supported agriculture scheme based near Forres in northeast Scotland. It grows “soft fruit and vegetables by organic methods for up to 200 local families”. Given I won’t be getting an EarthShare delivery anytime soon, what I liked was the site’s recipe index for vegetables – lots of great new ideas and more than a few that call for the vegetable to be roasted – Balsamic Roasted Beetroot with Garlic and Thyme; Warm salad of Savoy and Roasted Beetroot; Roasted Seasonal Vegetables with Couscous and Tomato Sauce; Roasted Carrot Soup with Thai Flavours; Roasted Roots with Parmesan; Roasted Root Vegetables with Cardamom; Celeriac and Roasted Garlic Soup; Parsnips Roasted with Lime; Roasted Swede and Honey Soup.
So, after all that, are you surprised that Lucy's suggestion of a roasted pumpkin and pear soup had me trembling? (Her inspiration came from former Chez Panisse chef Deborah Madison.) Simply brilliant result: one of those soups that will be on my table regularly for years to come.
So what do you do with roasted vegetables?

Roasted Pumpkin and Pear Soup
(Note: This is one of those rubbery recipes – increase or decrease the quantity of any ingredient to suit your tastes. Serves 4-6.)

4 pears
500g pumpkin (I like Jap pumpkins)
5cm chunk ginger
2tbsp olive oil
sea salt
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 medium onion, diced
500ml chicken or vegetable stock, kept hot in a saucepan
60ml natural yoghurt

Quarter and core pears (leaving the skin on); cut the pumpkin into chunks (leaving skin on). Peel ginger and cut into small sections.
Preheat oven to 160°C. In a large baking tray, toss pear, pumpkin and ginger with 1tbsp olive oil and sea salt to taste.
Roast pumpkin and pears until they are soft and just starting to brown – maybe 30 minutes. Remove from heat. When cool enough to handle, peel away the pumpkin skin. (I like to snack on the discarded skins as I go.)
In a large saucepan, heat remaining olive oil. Sweat garlic and onion until soft. Add pumpkin, pears and ginger mix, then hot stock. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.
Remove from heat and blend in a blender or food processor. You may find a few chunks of ginger remain … I discarded them.
Serve with a dollop of yoghurt.

Strange Green Soup

Disturbing how deeply faecal cruciferous vegetables can smell after a little time simmering in a saucepan. Can't believe that this beautiful thing could have become so powerfully antisocial.

It's packed away in the freezer now, labelled "Strange Green Soup, May 07", ylang-ylang oil is burning fiercely as an antidote, and I expect that over the next month I'll shock and awe my colleagues as my Strange Green Soup comes out for at least a few desk lunchs. I'm going to think of it as medicine, packed as it is with green leafy bits and other good things.
Thank you Lucy for your suggestions today, but it's all out-of-kilter, and overcooked to buggery ... I couldn't drag myself away from doing virtual tours of Kerala hotel rooms.

A Saturday that Ends in Tears

I blame the farmers' market. A woman alone with a camera at a farmers' market is a strange, alien creature. Children. Dogs. Families. SUV prams and strollers. Colourful gumboots. Babies. Baby Bjorns. Baby talk. Grubby faces. Tears.

What is it about farmers’ markets that I find so irksome and twee?
Then, a long-distance chat with my father. Struggling with radiotherapy side effects and emotion and mortality. I can do so little. Tears.
And then, how silly, Mary Poppins, the 1964 Walt Disney production, is the best thing on television. The things you come to understand when you’re grown up: As if a child would notice that, at the denouement of the film, Mrs Banks rips of her suffragette ribbon to tie to her children’s kite’s tail. I cried along with the song Feed the Birds when I was a child … the terrible loneliness and sadness of it. And now I’m crying about it at my age for heaven’s sake! The things you come to understand: The song isn’t about a few dirty pigeons; it’s about the old, poor, lonely woman selling the bird feed for “tuppence, tuppence a bag”… Tears. (But damn, have you ever noticed Julie Andrews’ great bone structure?)
Then, my new favourite CD, Songs of Jacques Brel by the Belgian songstress Micheline Van Hautem and Mich en Scène. If You Go Away. … “If you go away on this summer day; Then you might as well take the sun away” … Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra … they’ve all done it. But Van Hautem's, wrung-out version is extraordinary. Tears.
I bought two unripe avocadoes at the farmers’ market. If I had bought carrots with fluffy green tops instead, I might have made this wonderful salad, and maybe then there wouldn’t have been so many tears today.

Carote All’Olio, Aglio e Limone
(Carrot salad with garlic, oil and lemon)
Serves 4 as part of a meal

8 small carrots, peeled and steamed until lightly cooked
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp mint leaves, finely chopped
juice of 1 lemon
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place the carrots, garlic, parsley and mint in a salad bowl. Add the lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Set aside for at least 30 minutes before serving.

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)