Sharing a meal at Cumulus Inc.

'After Lunch' Cressida Campbell

Last week I was in Melbourne. I love being in Melbourne.

1. 
   
   The city looks good. The streets are wide, the buildings aren't too tall and in some of the inner suburbs the street scapes with their wonderful nineteenth century architecture are fabulous - for example the view down Brunswick Street towards St. Patrick's cathedral. The parks are beautiful and moreover thay don't seem to be infested with ibis.
2. 
   
   Who wouldn't enjoy a city where they have a public transport system which works. For $6.80 a day I could go where ever I wanted (within reason) on tram, bus or train - and I could get to everywhere I wanted to go easily, if not always quickly.
3. 
   
   Melbourne's shopping districts still have some character. Strip/high street shopping (in fact many suburbs have a 'High Street') is alive and well here.
4. 
   
   Melbournians care about food, they understand food and eating out and they have some fabulous restaurants. In Sydney it seems that you either eat at the local Chinese or you take out a loan and eat at some high end, reasonably pretentious establishment. In Melbourne it is possible to find excellent, casual, resonably priced eating on almost every corner.

Thanks to a friend well versed in the eating pleasures of this city we headed to Cumulus Inc in Flinder's Lane for dinner on Friday night. We were there at 6pm to ensure that we got a table (there are no bookings) and the place was already busy and noisy. (One of our party was 80 so sitting at a proper table was preferred over sitting at the bar however next time I want to sit up so that I can watch the food being prepared.) 

Back in the mists of time the invention of the restaurant did away with the idea of sharing food in public. Eating out has come to mean sitting down to your own plate of food and perhaps allowing your fellow diners at best a token taste. Sharing a meal with friends in a restaurant translates as sitting at the same table with them and all eating at the same time but not actually sharing the same food. That is unless you are eating at Cumulus Inc. Here the food is meant to be shared - each plate has enough for three or four with plenty to choose from - and all of it delicious. It was great fun to be able to sample a number of different dishes and to talk about what we were eating. What's more we came away happily satisfied having only spent just over $100 for three of us on food. (The cost of the wine is another matter!) And Stephanie Alexander, who was eating at the next table, looked as though she was enjoyng herself too.

How to buy a cookbook

One of my New Year's resolutions/promises to myself  - along with spending more time with my friends and less time with my children - was to stop buying cook books and recipe magazines. Partly because of my belief that there really are no new recipes as such, just slightly different combinations of ingredients, and partly because I have no room for anything new - something already treasured would have to go to make some space on the shelves.

Faced with shelves of recipe books in almost any bookshop how do you choose which one to buy anyway?

Herewith my golden rule  -NEVER buy a recipe book which doesn’t have a good index  regardless of the other attributes it may possess.

Recipes are usually arranged into ‘chapters’ perhaps grouped around seasonal produce (spring, summer, autumn, winter or perhaps even Easter and Christmas), around specific ingredients (chapters on figs, eggplant, potatoes etc) or around types of dishes (soups, main meals, desserts, salads). The problem arises when you want to find say spinach salad – is it in ‘summer’ or with ‘salad’ or in the chapter on ‘spinach’?  Always check  the standard of the index. Is the ‘Cauliflower soup with Gorgonzola and pickled pear relish listed in the index under ‘soups’, ‘cauliflower’, ‘pears’ and ‘Gorgonzola’? (In fact in Skye Gyngell’s A year in my kitchen this recipe is listed under all of these headings – well not ‘Gorgonzola’ but ‘cheese’ which is fair enough). My pet hate is knowing that a recipe is in the book somewhere but not being able to crack the code in the index. I have more than one book on the shelves which indexes the recipes by the title of the dish – so ‘Warm chicken salad’ is indexed under ‘w’ and ‘Fresh tuna salad’ is indexed under ‘f’. (Is anyone at the Women's Weekly listening?) This might rate as quirky but really it is just infuriating.
Even when they get the index right one of my gripes with many recipe books is that the method is always very concerned with what to do but not often with why. How will the end result be affected if the directions aren’t followed to the letter? What are the really critical stages in the process? This is especially useful information if you are making something for the first time. Not every writer can devote their time to testing recipes  a la Julia Child  nor indeed does every recipe book need to include the detail of Mastering the Art of French Cooking but a little more description like "heat the butter until its foam begins to subside" and "beat the hot sauce into the egg yolks by driblets" and less reliance on convention and 'recipe speak' not only gives the book a bit of personality but also helps to make the recipes more accessible.

My own preference is for recipes which are not too prescriptive, which offer ideas for combinations of ingredients or a number of variations on a theme. And I prefer books with character, where the personality of the author comes through either in the way the recipes themselves are written or through head notes or introductions or simply in the way the recipes are presented. Books that have that certain something - perhaps it’s the illustrations, or the way the recipes are set out, the personal information included – jokes, stories, historical details – whatever it is that tells me something I didn’t already know or takes me off in another direction, inspires me to cook or simply to read more.

Some books which fit the bill (and already have a space on the shelf) are Nigel Slater's Appetite, Maggie Beer's Maggie's Harvest, Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food and for looks and originality Jake Tilson's A Tale of Twelve Kitchens which is absolutley essential reading for any one who may have the desire to prepare Mexican food in a motel room.

Ottolenghi

Ottolenghi , 287 Upper Street, Islington is the sort of place where I would like to be able to eat much more often. ‘Fine dining’  and 'molecular gastronomy' have their place I suppose but I prefer not to get dressed up to eat out and don’t feel comfortable in the environment many restaurants perpetuate with staff who give the impression that they are lowering their standards by having to serve you. Ottolenghi specialises in simple dining.

It looks simple - the space is long and narrow and white with one communal table running the length of the room. The decoration is the food itself – front shelves piled with cakes and gorgeous billowy meringues, a table covered with bowls of salads (fabulous contrasts of colours), and boxes of groceries destined for the kitchen. The menu is a simple in form – an A4 page of the day’s choices (when I asked for a souvenir copy one was quickly run off the printer for me) – and in process – the price is set and depends on the combination of dishes you choose. On the day I am there for lunch the menu lists 11 salads and six ‘main courses’. The idea is to order as much as you think you can eat – either a choice of three or four of the salads (£9.30/£11.80), or, a combination of two or three of the salads and one of the ‘main courses’(£12.30/£14.30).
The food itself is deceptively simple. This is the sort of effortless food that results from careful experimentation with the balancing of flavours and textures and relies on the best fresh, seasonal produce.
For example salads such as

• roasted beetroot with poached quince, red endive, basil, red onion, sherry vinegar and pistachio
• roasted butternut squash with red pepper, pine nuts, basil and gorgonzola sauce
• spicy char-grilled broccoli with chilli and garlic
• roasted cauliflower with saffron, capers, sultana, red onion, green olives, parsley and lime
• white and yellow Iranian rice with barberry, cumin seeds, dill, almonds and pistachios

can be teamed with main courses such as

•  char-grilled organic salmon with seaweed, braised leek, red onion, chilli and mixed herbs salsa
•  lamb and pistachio kebab with parsley, spring onion, chilli and butter yoghurt

 or

•  roasted corn-fed chicken with dried figs, honey saffron, onion and basil

Little wonder then that the place is popular. When we arrived on a Saturday afternoon there was a queue at the door, standing perhaps a little too close to the food on display, and we waited 20 minutes to be seated.(It isn’t necessary to eat in Islington to enjoy the Ottolenghi experience because all the food can be purchased to take home and there are branches in Notting Hill, Kensington and Belgravia. And if all else fails there is Ottolenghi, The Cookbook.)

 Eating here was really the highlight of our few days in London and this style of dining – the environment and the menu – seemed like such a perfect fit with the Sydney climate and lifestyle that it seems ridiculous we had to go so far for the experience.

Books for Cooks

One of my favourite book shops is Books for Cooks in Melbourne . Here they have an excellent selection of current titles and a huge and diverse collection of second hand books. Tim knows his stock backwards, the staff are cheerful and helpful and altogether it is a great place to browse and potter about – very hard to visit without purchasing something.
The London Books for Cooks  was a little disappointing by comparison – a tiny space which for some reason seemed much more intimidating. And there were no second hand books! What the Notting Hill establishment does have however is a programme of workshops (held upstairs) and a miniscule café at the back of the shop. The café is their ‘test kitchen’ where the recipes from the books they sell are prepared by one of their resident chefs and then tried out on the clientele. On the day we were visiting there was a rush for the tables at lunch time – first in best fed, although the eaters appeared rather too sophisticated to actually push one another out of the way.
The combination of books and food isn’t the novelty that it used to be and the idea that shop which specialises in books about food should actually also sell food seems so obvious that it’s incredible it doesn’t happen everywhere. And indeed it does happen even here in Sydney – the Book Kitchen in Surry Hills  for one.
What was so appealing about the Books for Cooks approach was that they were using recipes from the books they had on the shelves. If you really enjoyed your slice of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Chocolate and Chestnut cake you might just feel inclined to purchase The River Cottage Year. Alternatively you could always take home a copy of Books for Cooks 9 the latest collection of the most popular recipes from the test kitchen which would also introduce you to recipes by Maggie Beer, Bill Granger and Greg and Lucy Malouf – perhaps not so surprising since almost all the Books for Cooks cooks are from either Australia or New Zealand.
Surely the best way to evaluate any recipe book is to cook from it. Unfortunately the average purchaser has no access to sampling before they buy. Doesn’t the potential buyer want to know whether the recipes actually work? Perhaps not. These days so many books are more photograph than recipe any way perhaps it doesn’t matter how well the recipes are written or how well they have been tested. Since it is unlikely that the average celebrity chef who is travelling the world opening restaurants and attending book signings has written all or indeed any of the recipes which appear in their books we can only assume that someone somewhere is doing the hard yards.
Which brings me to one of my perennial gripes – why don’t newspaper and magazine reviews do justice to recipe books? All too often the ‘review’ is a mere paragraph of publicity blurb rather than a thorough evaluation.
 

The illustration at the top of this post is a post card of an original oil painting by Selina Snow.

Neal's Yard Dairy - Cheese Heaven

There must be people who don’t like cheese. People who would find the idea of visiting a shop where the counter and shelves are piled high with rounds of cheese unexciting, even unpleasant. Such people do not swoon at the rich and pungent aroma, do not beg to be given even the tiniest taste. They are to be pitied.
If you are ever in London and need to visit a little bit of cheese heaven you must make a pilgrimage to Neal’s Yard Dairy.

Here you are not only welcome to browse but encouraged to sample and talk about their cheeses – from something like 70 cheese makers in Britain and Ireland and from Italy and France, made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats and buffalo – the choice is overwhelming. And the staff are unfailingly friendly and knowledgeable.

My favourite was the Stitchelton

a gorgeous soft, buttery blue with a rich complex flavour, produced on the Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire using organic, unpasteurised cows milk.  It was divine especially teamed with the most fabulous Eccles cakes I have ever eaten which we also bought at Neal's Yard.

If you don’t know about Eccles cakes – rich currant filling wrapped in flaky/puff pastry and dusted with sugar -you should try them. Named after the town of Eccles (now part of Greater Manchester) where they originated, there is a good, authentic recipe at The Cook and the Chef.

Now that we are back home my latest favourite cheese is a simple guy called Tom from Bruny Island - available at the Eveleigh Carriage Works markets in Sydney.

Holiday Shopping

Although travel is suppose to broaden the mind, in this modern age when most of the world comes to you via one means or another, there is very little about the world outside Australia that comes as a real surprise once you get there. That said I still think travel should be compulsory – if only to get things into some sort of perspective and reaffirm that Australia is perhaps the best place on earth to live even if it is much too far from everywhere else (which is of course half the reason why it is such a wonderful place to be).

Watching all those English chefs on television and reading their books could seduce you into thinking that we were missing out on something here in the Antipodes but you would be wrong. I had naively let myself think that somehow shopping in Sainsburys or Waitrose or Marks and Spencer might just be that little bit more exciting than being in Coles or Woolworths. It isn’t. A supermarket is a supermarket is a supermarket. OK there are a few different products to look at – many more home brand, ready prepared bits and pieces – and the Waitrose magazine Food Illustrated is a much better production and far more interesting than any house magazine you might find at the checkout here but that is about it. The supermarket shopping experience is impersonal and sterile almost by definition.

The best places to shop, and my favourite holiday attractions, are always fresh food markets – where ever they may be.

And in London the most exciting place to spend a Saturday morning is the Borough Market in the shadow of Southwark Cathedral. Not only is the produce here wonderful (fresh and diverse), the market appears to be very professionally run – there’s a map to guide you around (who’s where and when they are open) and a quarterly magazine called Market Life which introduces the stall holders and what they have available. This is perhaps as it should be for a market which can trace its origins back 2,000 years or so and has been operating on its present site for over 250 years.  The market is administered by a Trust, a charity administered by the Board of Trustees, whose mandate is to hold a market for the benefit of the community - now there's a novel idea.

Everything available on the Saturday we were there looked so tempting! From fresh fruit and vegetables, to fish, shellfish, Bresse chickens, rabbits and game birds, pies, pastries and the most seductive cheeses! I could shop here every week!

Dear Mr Slater

Dear Mr Slater,

Your latest book Tender Volume 1 was on my Christmas present list and I have spent the last couple of unexpectedly wet days reading and making lists of what I am going to grow and what I am going to cook.

We have been in our house for four months now and the garden is still a wasteland. Like you we live in an inner  city Victorian terrace - akin to living in a tunnel. If you stand at the front window you get a clear line of sight through to the end of the garden. We do however have access to the rear lane through the garage so all the messy bits, the manure and the mulch, will not have to be carried through the house.

Once the layout is complete - pathways and garden beds - we will have two major growing areas each about 12 metres long running the length of the garden which is only 5.4 metres wide at the widest point. Cramming all the fruit, vegetables and ornamental plants I would like to grow into this space will be something of a challenge.

The garden faces north west and so most of the area gets sun for the whole day. Although it has rained steadily in the few days since Christmas and our water tanks are full, providing sufficient water to keep the garden lush and productive may yet be our biggest hurdle - it is highly unlikely that we will ever see the garden covered in snow. Foxes are not a problem in our part of Sydney, we are however prepared to be troubled by possums who have a fierce reputation for finding the tastiest morsels in any garden - grow something they fancy and they will find it. Late in the afternoon just at dusk we also often see fruit bats flying over so perhaps they too will find our new garden a temptation.

Already there are some plants in the ground - rosemary (a house warming gift from friends who already have a well established vegetable garden), lemon balm, thyme and rhubarb crowns which I have been keeping alive in pots for months while  the renovations to the house were being completed and we were moving from one temporary home to the next. Also in pots are lemon thyme, marjoram, sage and tarragon all waiting for their permanent home.

Reading about other gardens always makes me lament those plants our climate mitigates against such as apples, quinces, rasperries, and I can only hope for success with gooseberries and elderberries (what joy to be able to make elder flower cordial). On the other hand citrus and olives  and passionfruit should present few problems. For advice on what to grow and when to plant here in Australia my reference is Stephanie Alexander's The Kitchen Garden Companion. In the right position Stephanie promises as many as 30 aubergines per bush per season - all your wonderful eggplant recipes will be put to good use.

If all goes well we will be planting in late February in time for broad beans and beetroot and chervil and spinach and masses of salad greens. Like you I have always been something of a gardener with a few herbs and vegetables grown in various gardens over the years but this is our first attempt to establish a garden which is largely edible and organic as well as a pleasant place to relax. I hope we are well on our way to establishing our own little oasis on this side of the globe by the time Tender Volume 2 is available.

Thank you for your books - I have many of them on the shelves. They are always very seductive - beautifully written and presented -and endlessly inspirational.