Vadouvan - will 2026 be its time?
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." [not] Oscar Wilde I'll begin with an aside - the quote above. First I just used the first half of it which I had a feeling was by Oscar Wilde, then I found Terence Eden's Blog which first reminded me that there was a second part of it and then told me in great detail why it wasn't Oscar Wilde who said it - the conclusion being it might have been a now defunct magazine - My Family Magazine
Jan 30
Chicken Kiev - or Kyiv, or something else altogether?
"the only thing that really matters with a kiev is that when you cut into that crisp shell, you're rewarded with an eruption of vivid green, garlicky butter. And that's a pleasure that will never go out of fashion." Felicity Cloake Only beware, because if you cut into it too rapidly that hot butter could spurt out and all over anything that is nearby - the tablecloth, your clothes, your fingers. And it will be hot. The trick is to get it to ooze - as shown here in Nagi Mae
Jan 29
What's a holiday?
"a time when someone does not go to work or school but is free to do what they want, such as travel or relax" Cambridge Dictionary I am currently on a permanent holiday. In the sense that I no longer go to some kind of paid job. Of course, being a mother and a wife I also have - had in part - another job. And even if I wasn't any of those things I would have little jobs - washing up, cleaning, cooking and so on. The things that need to be done in order to live an orderly
Jan 28
Thickening with flour
"Once the water has bonded with the flour and gelatinised, there’s no going back." A Life of Geekery I have returned to my sometimes series of how to thicken things - and flour. And I am confronted with a dilemma, because, I'm sure you all know how to thicken things with flour - or cornflour and maybe arrowroot - the other contenders shown here. I'm also not really into all the science behind how cooking happens. As soon as I start seeing those incomprehensible chemical na
Jan 26
Legends are never quite true - prawns Cipriani
"Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded." Hervey Allen It's first recipe time - this book and a recipe called Prawns Cipriani. I thought it was going to be fairly straightforward - a recipe to look into and some stories about this particular book which is one of my all-time favourites. Then I found that it was a known dish - not one that Beverley Sutherland Smith had made up - and then that there was an association with Guiseppe Cipriani and Venice
Jan 25
Self-soothing meatballs?
"any shovel-handed buffoon can roll a gob of mince into a rustic ball." Bunny Banyai So I said I would return to the meatball book and here it is - Around the World in 80 Meatballs by a lady called Bunny Banyai. A strange name - well the surname - and hard to pin down an origin, but I think somewhere in the book she mentioned Russia or Ukraine as an ancestral connection. Even stranger, however, is why this particular lady is writing a cookbook, for although she is indeed a
Jan 24
Cumin
"little striped torpedoes of flavour" Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall I'm pretty sure that I first encountered cumin in what this family calls simply - Kebabs - and probably the close second favourite dish of the Dearmans. I know I have written about the dish before - and sadly the recipe is not online. So just as a reminder - it's the marinade that is the thing - for beef cut in strips and threaded on to skewers to cook. The marinade for around 500g beef is 6 tbsp olive oil
Jan 23
Self soothing
"What does self-soothing look like for you when the world is on fire? What is bringing you ease in the doom and gloom?" Denai Moore Generally speaking self soothing can be accomplished for me by going for a walk, but today my walk ended with me feeling somewhat glum, because I had allowed various dismal thoughts to enter my brain. The photograph above is not taken on one of my usual walks - I think it was taken at the RACV Inverloch resort - or nearby anyway - and I am inde
Jan 22
Is anyone impervious to advertising?
"A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself." David Ogilvy I noticed that the Coles Magazine now has a new section - Coles Finds . No that's not strictly accurate. It has always - well for some time now - been there, but usually just a page, with a scattering of products. Now there is a whole three or four page section which is presented in the same way as any other of the sections in the magazine - and crucially - near the fr
Jan 21
Linzer torte - Italian, Austrian, Jewish?
"I didn’t have great hopes for this Linzer torte – it just seemed too simple to be really delicious." Alix Clark/SBS And I have to say when I turned to my lucky dip page - this is a lucky dip recipe - I felt a bit the same. When I think about it I don't think I have ever tasted a genuine Linzer torte. Did my mother ever make such a thing I wonder because I do remember something with a lattice top and maybe jam in the middle? If I did I doubt that my mother, or maybe even m
Jan 20
Honduras - the original banana republic
"In Honduras food is tricky, there seems to be prevailing thought that all tourists want western food and that burgers and nuggets will fit the bill." Bacon is Magic Which is perhaps an honest assessment of Honduran food, but my world tour is to try and discover what the so-called traditional foods of the world are. What the peoples of different countries supposedly eat at home, although these days, possibly they don't. Possibly everyone eats pizza and hamburgers, lasagne
Jan 18
Clear borscht - a first recipe
"the pride of old Polish cooking" Maria Lemnis I'll be up front here and say I'm not inspired by this one. I'm pretty sure I did borscht as most of us know it - a complicated meat and vegetable soup founded on beetroot - long, long, ago, but here I am with a first recipe for a clear borscht, the version of which I have in front of me, with no picture or recipe online and no comments in the book. I chose this picture of The Spruce Eats recipe from Barbara Rolek for Beet so
Jan 17
A tale of two lochs
Yesterday we came back from an overnight stay with friends in Inverloch which doesn't sound much like a long break, and I suppose it's not, but it's actually surprising how much such a tiny break - an excursion really - can feel almost like a holiday. And also if you care to, how many odd little bits of information you can pick up. The photograph is of Loch, not Inverloch - the second of the two lochs in question here. Loch is a tiny village where we stopped for lunch on
Jan 16
Things that scare me in the kitchen
"The fact is that cookery is not risk free. It involves fire and knives. While the possibility of injury may decrease with experience, the likelihood of it happening increases because of repetition." Jay Rayner/The Guardian This is actually a piece of street art but I've edited out the walls around it - an interesting picture for the street - but it's actually the best I've found so far to illustrate my theme of the day I think. I'm pretty sure that Jay Rayner's observation
Jan 15
BTW
"BTW - by the way: used, for example in emails, when you are writing something that relates to the subject you are discussing, but is not the main point of the discussion" Cambridge Dictionary It's also the name of an Indian food company that has fast food outlets, a catering service, and a whole range of snack foods, based in New Delhi. I'm not going to go into it in detail. Suffice to say that there are amazing people in the world who come from nowhere and build an empir
Jan 13
Murray cod - ethical greed?
"The stuff of legends" Native Fish Australia The AFR Weekend edition is my starting point for this but as I have progressed there are so many things to at least point to, that I'm not really sure I'm up to it. But I will give it a go. Like most Australians we are investors - and the AFR article which is my lead into the world of the Murray cod - is about this man Ross Anderson and his company Murray Cod Australia - or Aquna Murray Cod . He and his fellow Executive direct
Jan 12
Sunday - ending or beginning?
"Time flows in a strange way on Sundays" Haruki Murakami This year's Met diary has disoriented me somewhat because it begins its week with Sunday. In years gone by, and my feeling is, almost everywhere, mostly we think of Monday as the first day of the week. And the Met has previously followed that tradition. I am now into the third week of my diary, and I have only just adjusted to the fact that the day that says Saturday on the page, is not Sunday. To explain - for exam
Jan 11
Love and hate - a food blogger
"An incredibly successful food blogger/influencer who has millions of followers, struggling with a severe eating disorder." reddit commenter On to the next website on my list - Half- Baked Harvest whose home page is shown above. Having now 'finished' my research, I feel somehow a little 'dirtied' if that's the right word - simply because of some of the invective that I have come across - and which I shall come to - but also because it all made me feel so ignorant and/or
Jan 10
Hot day musings
"Little is more dispiriting to the serious glutton than being too hot to eat." Or to cook. And apologies to whoever said the above - I didn't write it down and now can't find it. Maybe Jay Rayner or somebody like that. 'We scream for ice-cream' says Coles in its current magazine as the headline for an advertising section. Cooling - oh yes. Not really food though is it? Or as Zoe Williams of The Guardian says: " don’t reach for a Magnum, they are for children". Moreov
Jan 9
Nigel's fruit
"And then there was fruit" Nigel Slater And flowers and nuts too. On the cover of this book - a Christmas present that I requested and received from my son and his ex?partner - is - I think - a blurry fig. Inside the cover is a rather beautiful red flower - also in soft romantic focus, but then all of the photographs in this companion volume to Nigel's book on the vegetables in his garden Tender Volume 1 , are taken by his friend and favourite food photographer of the Brit
Jan 8