Month in Review - August 2010

Highlights
1. Starting to pick green leafy things from the garden - goodness that mizuna is prolific. The borage is all in flower and so are the broad beans. The rhubarb is doing well, the tomatoes are in and the chilli plant has its first flower.
2. Reading weighty tomes with titles like 'The Sociology of the Meal', 'The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating' and 'Consuming Passions. Food in the Age of Anxiety' for the anthropology class I have enrolled in this semester. All very interesting even though there are rather a lot of multi -syllable words to get through. And reading keeps me away from writing - have yet to find a way of being able to do both at once.
3. Making bread. Have decided to stick with the Dan Leppard idea of baking the loaf in a covered container so that it generates its own steam - so far so good.

Low lights.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old person.......the other weekend we ate out a a newish venue in nearby Newtown, much reviewed and highly regarded. First gripe - the policy is not to take bookings. I know there are probably very good reasons for this approach but for us it meant going there at 6pm on a Saturday rather than risk having to wait around outside in the cold (in a part of town where there isn't much else to do) and/or fill up at the bar on drinks we didn't really want or need. As it happened we got a table straight away.
Second gripe - the tables were so close together that I was actually sitting closer to the strange next to me on the bench seat than I was to the person I was sharing dinner with. It wasn't possible to move from my seat without (and I quote) 'having to hang your arse over someone's dinner'.
The food and the service were fine - an interesting menu, attentive staff - but, gripe number three, the noise level was almost unbearable. The quasi-industrial decor with all those hard surfaces is not conducive to private conversation. It was hard to hear the waiter, it was hard to hear my partner across the table, it was even hard to hear everything that the stranger next to me was saying to her partner. In fact all the noise made it hard to concentrate on the food and even though the duck with cumquats was delicious we couldn't finish it fast enough so that we could get out of there. Rounded off the evening at home with a slice of homemade cake and a cup of tea watching an old James Bond movie on the telly and still got to bed before midnight.

Cookbooks - useful or good?

Last weekend the Observer Food Monthly (OFM) published their list of the 50 best cookbooks. Who decides these things? In this case the panel was made up of restaurant critics, food writers and chefs (some of them the authors of books which appear on the list). Who defines what is best? How 'best' – good to read, most interesting, most original, best researched, recipes most likely to work, most original recipes, most comprehensive? In 2005 Waitrose Food Illustrated published a list of the ten most useful cookery books ever. Now useful I understand. Like any collector of recipe books and books about food there are many volumes on the shelf which are there largely because they are important to have and then there are those which are spattered and dog-eared and regularly used.

What makes a book useful obviously depends on who you are, where you are and what you want to cook. I would turn to Stephanie Alexander's The Cooks Companion before I would consult Delia Smith because Stephanie speaks my language, she uses the ingredients I know I can find locally, and although both of them are a bit bossy if I had to choose one of them to be trapped on a desert island with it wouldn't be Ms Smith.
The good people at Waitrose put The Cooks Companion at number 10 on their list with Delia's Complete Cookery Course at number 2. Over at the Observer they rated number 31 and number 12 respectively but I would guess that a similar list compiled in Australia would reverse those rankings, if indeed Delia got a look in.
If I wanted definitive Italian food I would probably go to Marcella Hazan and Jane Grigson for English food and David Thompson for Thai but if I had to limit myself to only one food book would I choose the really useful book which would get me through pretty much any situation? If I could have only one book on the shelf would it be The Cooks Companion?
Comparing the Waitrose list with the Observer's top ten it appears that good and useful recipe books don't fall into simple categories of instructive versus informative although there are more books that have stood the test of time and/or broke new ground, either in subject matter or format, on the good list, for example, Robert Carrier's Great Dishes of the World (1963, number 10), Jane Grigson's English Food (1974, number 6) and David Thompson's Thai Food (2002, number 7).
Whilst obviously 'good' and 'useful' aren't mutually exclusive categories  precious few authors made it on to both lists. Elizabeth David scores at number 7 on the useful list (for a compilation volume of Mediterranean Food, Summer Food and French Country Cooking) and number 2 on the good list (for French Provincial Cooking). Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food is useful (number 3) his Kitchen Diaries is good (at number 4). Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food is useful (number 5) and her The Book of Jewish Food is very good (number 3).
It goes without saying that the latest list generated a slew of comments with poor Nigel being criticised not only for his close association with the OFM but for his purple prose and, worst of all for any recipe writer, for recipes that don't work.
For all the back and forth in the comments about the pros and cons of various books and authors there was no mention, for or against, of the one book which appears on both lists, which Waitrose ranked as the most useful and the OFM rated at number 5 – Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories.
Because I have made myself a promise that I will limit my purchases of food books, due both to lack of space and difficulty in justifying the expense, I have only recently acquired my own copy of Roast Chicken – the American version, purchased from the bargain table at at Green Apple Books in San Francisco. (I seem to be able to find room for the book somewhere if I haven't had to pay full price for it.)
This is a small, unassuming collection of some of Hopkinson's favourite recipes for a selection of his favourite ingredients which dates from 1994. It's interesting to read, Hopkinson is an engaging personality and his writing is entertaining and informative. But, in a book of only forty chapters, does devoting space to ingredients that are hardly main stream or universally popular - brains, kidneys, liver, sweetbreads and tripe, squab, rabbit and grouse - really help to qualify this book as a kitchen essential? True, if you are after a definitive recipe for roast chicken, or aȉoli or rice pudding or custard sauce, or poached salmon or slow braised pork belly or Saltimbocca alla Romana then this would be a good book to turn to. Also, buried in recipes for more complicated dishes, are classics like mayonnaise, vinaigrette and béarnaise but this book makes no pretence to be comprehensive. (Read my full review at The Gastonomer's Bookshelf.)

Some of the comments relating to the OFM list suggested that I am not alone. For many cooks there are two classifications of recipe book – those that you read, enjoy and learn from but rarely cook from (either because the recipes are too complicated, the ingredients are too esoteric or simply because the book has more to do with memoir/travel/history/ethnic background/ process etc., is more of a reference than an instruction manual) and those that you turn to regularly for  recipes, cooking ideas that are both relatively straightforward and trustworthy, like those of Delia, Stephanie, Margaret Fulton, Marguerite Patten and the Women's Weekly. These are books more concerned with sustenance than fashion.
For me Hopkinson's book fits somewhere between these two - it is good but not likely to be come overly besmirched and bespattered, although it could become a good deal more useful if I ever decide to put the family on an offal diet. If I should ever have to confine myself to choosing only ten food books Roast Chicken might well be one of them, I just hope I never have to face that challenge.

Month in review - July 2010



Foodscape by Carl Warner


As always at the end of the month there are a few items still lingering on the 'to do' list. Rather than add then on to the list for the next month I'm giving them a bit of space here.


1. Spent a good deal of July agonising over a review of Ottolenghi The cookbook. This is a book I love. There is something about it which is invigorating and exciting but I found it very hard to put my finger on just what it was that made it so. In part my enthusiasm stems from having eaten at 'Ottolenghi' in Islington and so going through the recipes and the photographs in the book I can relive that experience, but there is also something about the generous use of ingredients and the imaginative combinations which give the recipes a vitality and joyousness which is sadly lacking in many cook books. You can read the final result at The Gastronomer's Bookshelf.

2. Not too many notable eating out experiences of late although we did encounter something called 'Watermelon crème brûlée'. Ordered in the interests of gastronomic enquiry this dish turned out to be a thin, pink, slightly vegetable tasting custard topped with a crisp caramel shell – not something to be repeated at home or anywhere else for that matter. Where do people get these ideas?

3. I have an on-going fascination with food and art – food used to portray non food (as in the photograph above – for more Carl Warner see here) and vice versa (like crocheted and knitted food, food made from felt, sculpture etc), food in paintings (nothing better than a good still life) and food in literature and the movies. Wouldn't it be fabulous if Sydney could have an International Food Film Festival – they have one in New York, they have one in Chicago, they have one in Coffs Harbour so why can't we have one here?

Life beyond the blog.

There is more to life than blogging. Despite having grand plans to write something for this blog every week more often than not real life intervenes and the time slips away. These are photographs of some of the other ways I spend my time.

Patchwork - hand pieced and machine pieced - and hand quilting eats up a lot of time but is very satisfying. Every Tuesday I spend a day with friends stitching - better than therapy.

Just for a bit of fun I've started playing around with the idea of using non-food materials to represent food stuffs. Below are my first attempts at knitting and crocheting cakes, biscuits and tarts.

And then because I spend a good deal of my time in the kitchen I like to be well dressed.

Never say never.

After reading the Bourke Street Bakery book the thought of baking my own bread has haunted me, despite my declaration that I didn't ever want to become involved in the whole sour dough process.
So .... I began by going back to the Dan Leppard approach which involves preparing a leaven which is then frozen in loaf size nuggets. When you want to make bread you revitalise the frozen chunks, and add flour and water . The rest of the process is pretty simple, a few seconds kneading every hour or until the dough is ready to bake. What put me off this method was the 4 or 5 hours of messing about with kneading the dough - like it or not this would mean having to devote a whole day to the process.
A bit more web based research came up with the technique for baking Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The real appeal of this approach is that there is absolutely no kneading involved. All I have to do is remember to get the dough our of the refrigerator a couple of hours before dinner and we can have freshly baked bread with our soup and cheese. I'm still playing around and getting mixed results. Finding the best flour involves a bit of experimentation. Developing a good starter takes patience - rather than start from scratch with each new batch I am adding a portion of the last batch every time I make up a new mix. I'm also varying the time I allow the dough to rise before baking and I want to try Dan Leppard's method of baking in a covered pan rather than messing about trying to create steam in the oven.
The results look a bit rustic but all the loaves so far have had a very acceptable texture and flavour - and if there is any left over it makes great toast. And whats more baking bread is not a chore - it's fun!

The latest on the garden.

Before (the garden in December 2009) and after (July 2010)

Progress on the garden has been slowish but steady -getting rid of rubbish, finishing the paving, building the walls to define the garden beds (using the sand stock bricks recycled from the building renovations) and finally, last Friday, taking delivery of 3 cubic metres of garden soil - and suddenly we have a garden! Not a finished garden by any means - there are still some edges to fix up - but planting has begun!!

The herb garden now boasts marjoram, thyme, lemon thyme, bay, parsley (both flat leaf and curly), chervil, lemon verbena, lovage, borage, sage, mint, rosemary and tarragon. The garlic has all sprouted and elsewhere there are rhubarb crowns, and seedlings of kale, sorrel, spinach, tatsoi, rocket, mizuna, cos lettuce, red oak leaf lettuce and radicchio. The seed potatoes and the seeds  - broad beans, nasturtiums and marigolds - should arrive this week.

We have been collecting the inner tubes from toilet rolls and I am using the old fish tank as a little hot house hoping to get the seeds I saved from the ground cherries and tomatillos to germinate.

It is so exciting to be growing things again - going out every morning to check on progress (there hasn't been much yet). It is also wonderful to see everything looking so green and healthy thanks to the recent rain and despite the cold weather - last week we had frost on the car which is almost unheard of here in the inner city. There's also some vivid colour in the garden - spikes of red and purple bromelliads, which always flower at the most surprising times, and the cerise, frilly, droopy bells of the zygocactus which the native soldier birds love and go through all sorts of contortions to get at. All the orchids are full of flower buds and this year even the cymbidiums have come to the party - out of the 5 or 6 pots there are only four flower spikes and three of those are all on the same plant but that is a big improvement on nothing at all for the last couple of years. All these plants along with my collection of succulents have had a bit of a hard time over the last year, moving around from one place to the next in pots or neglected on the building site to fend for themselves, so I am more than grateful that they have survived and thrilled to see them thriving now that they are getting some care and attention.

Bees on film

Home from San Francisco there was barely time to unpack the suitcase before heading off to the 57th Sydney Film Festival. I always scan the programme for anything to do with food and of the few films I managed to see this year only two had prominent food content.
Food was unexpectedly significant in I am Love, a lavish Italian film which has Tilda Swinton falling for her son's friend who happens to be a chef. She is seduced in part by a dish of prawns which said chef prepares for her which looked none too appetising on the screen, certainly not the sort of thing you would be prepared to leave home for. The dramatic ending hinges on sharing the recipe for a favourite Russian soup which also seemed to have lost something in translation and didn't look as though it deserved all the emotional turmoil it unleashed. Obviously it is not so easy to make food look as glamorous as Tilda Swinton in a simple, beautifully cut dress or to use a plate of prawns to convey messages in the same way as scenes of Milan wrapped in snow. There is a lot more going on here of course than just cooking and eating although the scenes which showed food being prepared and served were used to good effect to demonstrate a range of important elements in the story such as power, class, sensual pleasure, desire, satisfaction, love, reciprocity, nurturing and belonging.
The one film which was specifically food related was Colony  a documentary about bees and bee keepers in America and the threat of Colony Collapse Disorder to their livelihoods, focusing on David Mendes (Vice President of the American Bee-Keeping Federation) and Lance and Victor Seppi, novice bee keepers of Pixley, California.
The Seppi family are worthy of a documentary in their own right. Fundamentalist Christians they struggle with the conflict between their religious beliefs and the need to be business men and to do business in difficult times and with the tensions doing business creates within the family. The parallels between the workings of the bee hive and the family are obvious, especially the role of the Seppi matriarch and that of the Queen bee. More subtle is the mirroring of the collapse of the hives in the collapse of the life of the bee keepers and the suggestion that whilst bees normally know their role and work in harmony for the common good the same cannot always be said for humans. The Seppi's struggle to keep their fledgling business alive, meanwhile David Mendes tries to find a cause for Colony Collapse Disorder and to keep the members of his association informed.

I was especially interested in this story because I had just returned from seeing acres and acres of almond trees in California. What I didn't know then was that the pollination of these trees is the biggest managed pollination event in the world. American bee keepers make their money out of shipping their bees around the country from Florida to Maine and over to Washington and California to pollinate various crops like apples and blueberries as well as almonds. Thousands of hives are packed onto semi-trailers and moved from one pollination event to the next. In California the pollination of the almond trees takes place in February and requires more than 1.3 million hives! A grower usually needs 2.5, 6 frame hives per acre and negotiates a contract with bee keepers to supply the number of hives he needs. Growers pay somewhere between $US 120 -150 per hive which means that the cost of pollination accounts for around 20% of their overall costs.

Bee hives suffer attacks from fungi, viruses, bacteria, parasites and other insects most of which are understood and manageable. Numbers of bees also decrease in winter because of the colder weather. Colony Collapse Disorder is a newly defined phenomenon, first properly identified in 2006, without, it would seem, any one particular cause. Just how significant loses from CCD are seems difficult to determine. Figures suggest that US bee keepers typically lose around 30% or more of their bees over winter but keepers who suffer CCD can lose 45% of their bees hence their concern to know what to do to either combat the problem or prevent it. David Mendes is shown as prosecuting the case with pesticide manufacturers who appear to be typically uncaring, convinced they are in no way responsible and uninterested in finding a solution. There seemed to be no move on the part of the growers themselves to help the bee keepers either financially or politically.

The film covered the tense and mutually dependent relationship of the growers and the bee keepers. The bee keepers have to contend with growers who renege on contracts and source cheaper bees elsewhere or drive hard bargains, arguing that $120US per hive favoured by growers is not economical. The growers on the other hand do not trust the bee keepers to supply healthy bees or to be able to honour their contract based on the number of frames/hive/acre. In the case of the almond crop the situation gets even more complicated when you add in problems for the growers such as decreasing prices for almonds and decreasing yields and acreages because of issues with water allocation in California, and increasing cost for the bee keepers.

No bees does in truth mean no honey, no work and no money on a vast scale. This was a very interesting and thought provoking insight into just one corner of our food supply and the complicated, fragile web of interdependence so vulnerable to influences that we cannot control.

Colony Collapse Disorder gets a mention in the press from time to time – the latest suggestion is that it might be caused by radiation from mobile phones.