Lady Lunchalot

I live in a renovators delight. The first thing O and I did when we bought this place was put in a new oven.

I love my oven. It’s my most prized possession (yes O, after my engagement ring). It cost more than my first car, and I’ve even spent more time buffing and polishing it than I did on my first car. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve spent more time buffing and polishing my oven than I have spent on my current car. Now that I think about it some more, I’ve never actually buffed and polished anything other than my oven.

A few years ago I was on a training course and was eating at a hotel seafood buffet with a bunch of strangers. There was a pile of oysters at the buffet, and I love oysters, so I came back to our table with a plate. One of the women was quite grossed out that I could eat them, and after chatting with her about it for a while she revealed that she’d never actually tasted an oyster before. She just knew she wouldn’t like them.

This I cannot understand. You HAVE to try foods to know what they taste like, otherwise how will you ever know? When I was a kid I hated smoked salmon, avocados, broccoli, zucchini and mangoes. I love all these things now, and would have missed out if I didn’t keep on trying them.

Anyway, I somehow talked this woman into trying an oyster, and as it turned out, she didn’t mind them so much.

At least, that’s what she told me. She might have just been trying to get me off her back.

I love herbs. I wish I could keep some of them alive in the big wine barrel by my back door.

Rosemary is one herb that I particularly love. You can do so many different things with rosemary. Sugar it and garnish sweet desserts. Use it in bread. Roast lamb with it. So many things.

Rosemary was said to be an aphrodisiac in Medieval times. Maidens used to bathe in it to attract their future husbands. It symbolised remembrance and fidelity and is still used in many modern perfumes today.

A herb with such a strong scent is a great trigger to induce a Pavlovian response. That’s why I am incorporating rosemary into my hair and bouquet for my wedding day. It’s such a beautiful herb with such ancient symbolism, every time I roast a leg of lamb, or bake a loaf of rosemary bread for years to come I will think of my wedding day.

I have been washing up. Haven’t started bolognese yet, so nothing too exciting happening in the kitchen besides the chemistry in the slow cooker.

I thought I’d write about one of my most memorable meals.

I was about 20 years old and in Tasmania in early January on a driving holiday with Zoeball, Serge and Dolores. We were driving to a town called Bicheno, which is not far from the spectacular Freycinet Peninsula, were we had booked in to stay the night. Along the way we stopped at a roadside stall where some guys were boiling up fresh crayfish in big metal vats by the beach. These crays were so fresh, the guys were still in their wetsuits with wet hair from fishing them out of the rocks nearby. They were selling them at a ridiculously cheap price - about $10, or something obscene, so we bought a few and continued along.

The next stop was a winery where we picked out some fantastic Tasmanian white. I can’t remember what it was. Perhaps a Sav Blanc of some description?

When we got to the B&B, we discovered it was actually part of a berry farm. In our room we had a basket of freshly picked berries and clotted cream waiting for us. The rooms overlooked a dramatic cliff which smashed down into the ocean.

Dinner was a no-brainer. Fresh crays, only an hour so out of the water, a simple salad, a great wine and fresh berries for dessert. All enjoyed with an incredible seaside view and lifelong friends by my side.

I ate that meal almost ten years ago and I can still remember every mouthful!

The other day O and I had an uncontrollable craving for jam doughnuts.

Ok, I had the doughnut obsession and talked about it for long enough that I manage to get O fixated on them too.

We went to the Alfa Bakehouse in Yarraville. I bit into it and sticky gooey red jam spilled out everywhere. I looked like a cocaine addict caught red-handed at a murder scene - blood red jam on my hands and sugary snowflakes all over my nose.

Actually, I can feel the craving coming back! Uh-oh… I think I’m getting a little too compulsive about those doughnuts.

Alfa Bakehouse
42 Anderson St
Yarraville

Waaay better than raindrops on roses, or whiskers on kittens, today I treated myself to one of my favourite things.

Bratwurst from the Queen Victoria Market.

I spent a couple of hours at the Vic Market this afternoon shopping for ingredients for the Blogathon. I have two very strict rules when I go to the Vic Markets: I have to buy something I have never cooked before, and I have to eat a bratwurst.

The Bratwurst shop can be found in the deli section of the market. You can choose between spicy, mild or weisswurst sausages. In the seven years I have been performing this ritual, I still can’t decide which one I like best.

These piping hot tubes of 100% unadulterated Deutschland are nestled into fresh, soft bread rolls, with whatever combination of onion, mustard, sauerkraut, sauces and cheese you might like. I always go with seeded mustard, onions, and sauerkraut. And cheese if I manage to avoid thinking about my hips or my wedding dress.

The best thing about the Bratwurst sausages is the way the skin makes an audible crack when you bite into them. And the way they are kind of messy to eat, which makes them even more fun, because we all enjoy food more when it’s messy to eat, even if we don’t admit it. And how they always make me think of the Von Trapp family, busty Oktoberfest beer wenches, and pretzels as big as the Reichstag.

But then, sausages often have a strange effect on people.

I received this gorgeous email from Kathryn’s Mum today:

Hello LML (like minded lady)…  Kate passed on your blog, and have to report how impressed I am with your interest, energy (all those meals to devour and digest, then to be able to regurgitate all the details of what you ate for PLU’s, people like us). Quite a feat. Do you carry a notebook and look like a food writer when in eateries? Or can you commit all to memory?

LLAL: The truth is Judy, I only remember the meals that are truly amazing, or amazingly terrible. The dishes that are in between I don’t bother writing about - unless I cooked them!

John and I make a pilgrimage to Stef’s for the cheese on toast whenever in Melbourne. Then John loves to visit Will Studd’s fromagerie. He and his mates have a box of cheeses sent up by air especially to take on their annual fishing trip to Fraser Island. He just loves dairy.  I have also discovered the Italian grocery shop you mention in Brunswick. Little Italy in a barn…

LLAL: This is a couple who really knows how to have a holiday.

Have you read a book titled Food in History by Reay Tannahill. Quite interesting tho a bit dry. Good to dip into for little known facts.

LLAL: Haven’t come across this one, but I can also recommend The Cambridge World History of Food. It’s a ridiculously expensive book that I’ve always drooled over, but have only come as close as borrowing Volume 1 from the library. 

We introduced K and T to Gorgonzola Dolce last weekend.  We devoured lots when in Italy and have only recently discovered it here, since changes in import laws. It is wonderful and runny and great with walnuts, pears and sourdough. Yum. 

LLAL: With suggestions like this, I am doomed never to fit into my wedding dress.

Have you discovered Herbies spice blend Chermoula.  It is great dusted lightly on chicken before BBQ or pan tossing. Finish with a good squeese of lemon or lime. It has a wonderful smokey flavour.

LLAL: Mmm… sounds great! 

Thought you may find the following quote from Francis Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun, of interest. You may already be familiar with the content:“Figs reveal water. On the terraces they grow neat the stone chutes we discovered. The natural well has webby roots crawling down into it from the fig above. I’m mixed on figs. The fleshy quality feels spooky.

“In Italian, il fico, fig, has a slangy turn into la fica, meaning vulva. Possibly because of the famous fig leaf exodus from Eden, it seems like the most ancient of fruits. Oddest, too - the fig flower is inside the fruit.  To pull one open is to look into a complex, primitive, infinitely sophisticated life cycle tableau. Fig pollination takes place through an interaction with a particular kind of wasp about one eighth of an inch long. The female bores into the developing flower inside the fig. Once in, she delves with her oviposter, a curved needle nose, into the female flower’s ovary, depositing her own eggs. If her oviposter can’t reach the ovary (some of the flowers have long styles), she still fertilizes the fig flower with the pollen she collected from her travels. Either way, one half of this symbiotic system is served - the wasp larvae develop if she has left her eggs or the pollinated fig flower produces seed.

“If reincarnation is true, let me not come back as a fig wasp. If the female can’t find a suitable nest for her eggs, she usually dies of exhaustion inside the fig.  If she can, the wasps hatch inside the fig and all the males are born without wings. Their sole, brief function is sex. They get up and fertilize the females, then help them tunnel out of the fruit. Then they die. The females fly out, carrying enough sperm from the tryst to fertilize all their eggs. Is this appetizing, to know that however luscious figs taste, each one is actually a little graveyard of wingless male wasps? Or maybe the sensuality of the fruit comes from some flavor they dissolve into after short, sweet lives.”

LLAL: I will never, ever look at figs the same way again. Wow!

good eating fellow foodie

fond wishes
Judy (Kathryn’s mother)  

I love it. Yesterday I found a cafe in Horsham that has “Anti Pesto” foccaccias on the menu. I love a sandwich with strong beliefs. Down with basil and pinenuts!

Dumplings are a reminder that for all the evils in the world, there are still some things that are good and pure.

Dumplings have to be one of the most delightful foods imaginable. These little gift-wrapped nuggets of deliciousness are seen in cultures all around the world, from spiced Chinese dim sum, to warming Jewish kneidlach, to Italian agnolotti.

Dumplings come in two varieties. There are filled dumplings, that consist of a filling enveloped by some kind of noodle-esque wrapping (think wontons, ravioli, dim sum). And there are dropped dumplings, which are the naked, unwrapped kind that are usually made from something starchy like flour or potato. These are the stodgy kinds of dumplings that I always associate with Eastern Europe, borscht, and words with too many consonants.

Personally, the filled dumplings are my favourite kind, because it makes me feel like I am being given a present every time I eat one. You never quite know what’s inside the wrapping, so there’s always an element of surprise.

I love Asian filled dumplings, like gyoza from Japan and Chinese wontons. I used to work near a sushi bar that I couldn’t walk past without buying a gyoza. Any time I am sick I crave wonton soup, otherwise known as short soup. I love how the loose ends of the wonton wrapper swim through the broth like mermaid hair. When I used to live in Chinatown in Brisbane, I once had a nasty bout of tonsilitis. I wandered down to my favourite Chinese takeaway to order some short soup, and as my tonsilitis voice had that deadened, closed-throat quality the woman (whose English wasn’t the best) made the logical assumption that I was deaf, so she yelled at me so I could hear her. I mean, if I was deaf, yelling probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. And she didn’t seem to understand my English very well either. I couldn’t seem to make her understand that I just wanted some short soup.

But I digress.

My other favourite dumplings are the Italian variety. But that shouldn’t come as much surprise - I love anything wrapped in pasta. There are so many types of Italian dumplings; agnolotti, ravioli, tortellini, even gnocchi. I once read a foodie crime novel that involved the mysterious death of a chef whose signature dish was ravioli with so many types of fillings it looked like a patchwork quilt.

Poland is very big on dumplings. So much so, they even have an annual dumpling festival in Krakow each August. I think the Poles have got the right idea. A dumpling festival must be one of the happiest places on earth (after Disneyland of course). How could anyone ever be sad while eating a dumpling?

Have a look at http://www.justhungry.com/2004/08/is_my_blog_burn.html for more info from a dumpling lover.

In the late 90s, Australia’s politicians were in hot debate about how to introduce a tax on goods and services. One party wanted to slap a single tax on everything, including food, the other didn’t think we should have one at all, especially not on food.

They ended up meeting somewhere in the middle,with some foods being exempt, while otherwise weren’t.

For weeks Australia’s Parliament House was a hotbed of culinary contention as pollie after pollie ferociously argued about which foods should be taxed and which shouldn’t. Parliamentarians were waving barbecued chickens and paninis around all over the place.

So there were some staples that would be exempt from the tax, but, which would would they be? Bread was declared a basic necessity of life, but how were these political gourmets going to classify what was a bread and what wasn’t? Should a chapatti be taxed when a loaf of multi-grain isn’t? Is a bagel any less a bread than a hamburger bun?

With so much food available to us today, I like that the humble loaf of bread is still considered crucial to our survival. Our language is littered with expressions that highlight the starring role bread has played in our evolution. Man cannot live by bread alone. When we have no money we are out of dough. We go to work to earn our bread and butter. Pregnant women have a bun in the oven. Handy inventions are the best things since sliced bread. When we dine, we are breaking bread. The primary income-earner in a family is the breadwinner.