Newsletter 19, August 2014

The Weather report

Weather has been very much on my mind. The first almond blossom is a marvellous moment promising that spring is just around the corner. Before spring had actually sprung in Melbourne I had a few days in Noosa, anticipating sunshine, walks in the national park, and lazy lunches. Well there was one day like that and then the sky went black and the rains came, and stayed. There was 7 inches of rain in a few days and it was cold! We even had a fire. Still time for some lovely lunches. The linguine with spanner crab and the passionfruit roulade with Turkish delight icecream that I had at Pitchfork Restaurant at Peregian were both quite wonderful.

My new website

A new website sounds very ho-hum perhaps but it has been some months in the making. I am thrilled with the look of it, and already I have received really positive feedback. The new seasonal menus have been a hit which is really exciting as I do love writing them. Winkling out less well-known recipes that food lovers might never have cooked, or might have skipped over. Sometimes the dish I have featured has a special memory associated with it, such as Le Cassoulet in one of the Winter menu selections.

Many years ago now, a diner at Stephanie's restaurant who came from Toulouse, one of the three most famous casoullet towns, ordered my version. I was trembling. But he loved it and was the one who told me of the local habit of 'faire chabrol' where a small amount of the red wine drunk with the dish was tipped into the last mouthful in each diner's plate. The acid and tannin believed to cut the richness of the dish. Personally I think a twenty-minute walk after eating a cassoulet might achieve the same result.

Bendigo Writers' Festival

I had an enjoyable weekend at the Bendigo Writers Festival with friends. It was very well-organised around the central arts precinct. The venues were excellent, the acoustics exemplary, and I thought Bendigo itself showed up well as a splendid regional city of wide boulevards, green gardens, and wonderful gold rush era public buildings.

The best bits are not just the sessions themselves but the discussions afterwards. We don’t always agree. Some of us have wonderful powers of recall and can enlighten those who went to a different session. Not me. I remember snatches, a word, a sentence, an idea, a gesture – the flyaway hair of John Wolseley. I registered extreme annoyance when the moderator of a session either mumbles, or takes over – both terrible sins at a writers festival. 

I wished Alex Miller had read his own stuff. He was expected to speak of his latest work Coal Creek but in fact was easily led to meaty pronouncements about the world we are all living in. No moral progress in 3000 years since Homer. Deeply reflective. Felt that writers festivals should be more than sales conferences – give a glimpse into the mind of the writer, what matters. He grew up in rural Queensland and worked as a stockman encountering aboriginal people as tribal people and Miller says, as with the lingering guilt of the Holocaust he encountered in Hamburg, his guilt at being the beneficiary of aboriginal dispossesion will never leave him.

John Wolseley has given me such joy looking at his work. I own a small print. He contrasts his interest in ‘being within’ the landscape, as he put it, to early landscape artists who viewed a fixed landscape with a magisterial gaze. His interest is in touching the landscape, ‘swimming in it, drink the wild air’. Identifying with other things that live there, birds, ants, lizards. Bury a canvas for a few months come back and be delighted by the marks, the tracks of creatures that have visited the work and have acted upon it. His paintings are luminous, creatures are sympathetically as well as accurately drawn and absolutely ‘in their place’. Rich stuff.

An extra attraction in Bendigo was the exhibition of extraordinary underwear, Undressed. Incomprehensible how any seduction might have taken place and we all wondered how these women  managed the bathroom with so many loops and buttons.

Cast-iron frying pan

No sooner had I raved about my venerable oval copper sauteuse on social media with a picture of a superbly crisped King George whiting, than I received a prototype of a very heavy cast-iron pan to try. Long ago at Stephanie's restaurant I used to buy similar pans which were indestructible, never buckled, could be heated to incandescent temperatures ideal for searing a duck breast over jumping rock salt, but were very heavy. I needed two hands to move them. They were sold in camping shops and a few old-fashioned hardware stores. I am told that every American cook has his or her own cast-iron skillet which is treasured.

The prototype I have is not as heavy as I remember but came with instructions on how to season it, much as one does with a new wok. A rub with neutral oil then bake the pan for an hour in a very hot oven, then allow it to cool. But then to do it again and again. I stopped after three goes. It is true that the pan now performs beautifully and just needs a wipe with a cloth or paper or a swish under a hot tap to clean in. (No soap ever.) And it must be dried like a wok before storing it to prevent rust. All I need to do is find somewhere to hang it so I don't break my arm lifting it in and out of a cupboard.

The manufacturers of this Fonte pan claim it can also be used as a baking disk and a cake pan! As it goes happily from stovetop to oven it is very versatile. It can also be used on the flat plate of a barbecue to grill a flattened quail or chicken breast. With a splash of wine or stock you can make a sauce that cannot be done when meat is cooked directly on the hot plate. I look forward to baking a Rosemary and polenta pan bread (recipe is in The Cook's Companion App and book) very soon.

Do go to Kickstarter and encourage this excellent Aussie initiative.

Tony's lunch

My special friend Tony Tan had always promised to cook me a housewarming lunch of crab. It took a while for all our diaries to line up but the day dawned. It was to be his speciality, black pepper crab, made with blue swimmers. All I had to do was cook rice, set the table, make a light dessert, and clean up. Tony used 6 hot chillies and masses of crushed black pepper. He gave us all a lesson in cleaning crabs, and cutting them so that there was minimum difficulty at getting to the meaty parts. And he pointed out the differences between boy and girl crabs. The lunch was one of those amazing occasions never to be forgotten. For an hour we were up to our elbows in crab juices, cracking shells, lips and mouth hot but not outraged. It was fascinating that this combination of a lot of chilli and a lot of black pepper was utterly delicious and quite manageable for three ‘round-eyes’.

Tony was happy to share his recipe, previously published in Gourmet Traveller.

Black Pepper Crab

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg fresh crabs, cleaned and cut into serving pieces
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced
• 6–8 fresh long red chillies (not bird’s eye), chopped
• 1 tbsp mashed preserved soy beans
• 2 tbsp black pepper, crushed
• 1 tbsp dried prawns, soaked, drained, ground coarsely
• 4-5 sprigs curry leaves, coarsely chopped
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp dark soy
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 100 ml oil
• 50 g butter
• 500 ml chicken stock or water
• salt to taste

Method

Blend garlic, shallots, and chillies to a coarse paste. Add the preserved soy beans and blend 20 seconds. Heat oil in a wok or pan. Add the blended ingredients and curry leaves. Fry 3-5 minutes until fragrant. Add dried prawns and fry for another 2 minutes. Add the crabs and continue to stir fry another 3-5 minutes.

Add remaining ingredients and put a lid on. Cook for 5-10 minutes or until the sauce begins to thicken and the shells turn bright red and remember to stir now and then. Serve immediately with some crusty bread.

(The next night I used the remaining sauce to spice up a piece of grilled barramundi and that also was quite delicious, so do not waste any excess sauce).

As the finale I made a classic Spanish cream where whipped egg whites are folded into a hot lemon and passionfruit custard. The whipped whites sort of poach and stay fluffy. The lemon and passionfruit juices cause the custard to separate into a jelly layer and a creamy layer. A perfect finish after such a stimulating beginning.  

A book moment: Paul Bangay's Stonefields

Garden designer Paul Bangay is well known as an author of absolutely stunning books as well as for the gardens he designs. His home Stonefields near to Malmsbury is quite wonderful. Every two years Paul opens his gardens to raise much-needed funds for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation and at the same time signs many copies of his books. I bought a copy of his latest book Stonefields (published by Lantern/Penguin) which painstakingly describes the story of its creation! The property was planned and planted during Victoria's worst drought for one hundred years. The photography by Simon Griffits is quite enchanting but the words reveal so much of Paul's restless and creative spirit as well as his deep sympathy with and understanding of plants and landscape. Those of us who have had the privilege of walking in his garden rooms know how brilliantly he executed his vision.

Give the Cook's Companion App for Father's Day

Father's Day is less than a fortnight away, and the Cook's Companion App (AUD$49.99) is the perfect gift for a food-loving Dad. You can 'gift' the App digitally with a few easy steps, and ensure it arrives on the correct day with a message from you.

If your Dad loves to cook, he'll enjoy having over 2,000 recipes in his pocket, plus ingredient information, cooking tips, how-to videos and the ability to email a shopping list.

I'll even send your Dad a card, personally signed by me! Click below for details.