Mushrooms and Chinese costermongers

This is a first recipe post - one from Beverley Sutherland Smith in her book simply called Vegetables.

In this case, however, I first want to comment on the real beginning of the book - her introduction which begins with her memory of the Chinese vegetable man who used to deliver vegetables to her home. As you probabably are aware the Chinese, have been selling us all fruit and vegetables from the earliest times of white settlement of Australia. I'm guessing they may even have been here before then. This picture is probably earlier than the 50s and 60s that Beverley Sutherland Smith talks about in her introduction, but then again, maybe not. I tried very hard to find a picture of an actual Chinese man delivering his goods on a horse and cart to suburban households, but failed miserably. Lots of older pictures with large filled baskets, dangling from poles and a few of bakers and milkmen but not vegetables, and not Chinese.

I did find this, although I think it's American. Over there in England we had home delivered milk on a horse drawn cart, and the rag and bone man, and the knife grinder, but I don't remember vegetables. We went to the shops and the market for those.

Anyway I like the photograph - you can see the largely Asian market gardens out at Bacchus Marsh still. I know they are Asian because the people in the fields are wearing those conical Asian hats.

At the risk of breaking copyright I'm going to reproduce a large chunk of her little story - just because:

"It is late afternoon and already the shadows stretch across the pavement. I have my feet wedged firmly on the bottom rung of the iron gate so that I am able to peer over the top. I have been allowed to watch and wait for the vegetable man; the clip-clop of the horse will echo down the street minutes before the big black cart comes into sight.

Already I know what to expect of this weekly ritual. The Chinaman will pull the horse to a halt to wait patiently, occasionally flicking the flies away with his tail, while the old man vanishes into the dim cavern of the cart. He will appear with a huge wicker basket, celery stalks pointing skyward, pumpkins, onions and potatoes on the base and big loose-leafed silverbeet resting over these. There may be tomatoes in season or some peas and beans and if he has any left the Chinaman will carefully carry in his old bucket some fish packed in ice; more rarely, a pair of rabbits will be slung over his sholder. He will make his way to the kitchen and spread the food out on the scrubbed wooden table where it will be examined. An intense discussion will take place about the prices before he gives us a shy smile and moves on to his next customer."

She then goes on to describe, like me, her first experience of going to Europe and the abundance of vegetables she found there, prepared in so many more interesting ways than in her childhood, and then on to the present day when, of course, there is anything and everything - but still often grown and sold to us by the Chinese.

The book is slim - given to me by David for Christmas in 1995, when I was probably in a Beverley Sutherland Smith/Delia Smith phase. And how odd, I have just noticed, that they were both Smiths.

Although she is not a vegetarian, this book is indeed completely vegetarian, even in the section on Main dishes - unlike her The Seasonal Kitchen, which is focussed on her vegetable garden. I have not used it much for some reason - maybe I was about to leave her in the lurch for Nigel Slater, for I think it may well be the last of her books that I obtained. Unless that's The Seasonal Kitchen. Anyway although there are probably lots of excellent recipes in there, there are very few photographs, and maybe by then I superficially preferred books with lots of pictures.

And so there is no picture of her first recipe -Mushroom crunchies in the book and no recipe online. The cooking world out there doesn't love her like I do.

And here a brief aside, on first recipes. In a book with just a few photographs of the dishes, would you not choose to illustrate your first dish? I imagine that at least some, when buying a cookbook will open at the first recipe to see what the book has to offer. The recipe may be delicious - as I'm sure this one is - but if it hasn't got a picture you won't be hooked. And if all you see for quite a while is pages of recipes with no pictures, then that also does not tempt.

This is the closest I could find to what I think they would look like, although she does say to flatten the balls a bit. The recipe is from Jo Cooks which I think I featured on one of my website profiles. She calls it Crispy baked Parmesan breaded mushrooms and it's similar but her mushrooms are left whole.

Beverley chops her mushrooms(500g) and sautés them until dry before adding to some sautéed (in butter) chopped onions (small) and garlic (1 clove), with parsley and thyme, salt and pepper. Cool. Add breadcrumbs (1 cup), an egg and Parmesan (1/2 cup). Chill. Form into balls, flatten slightly, dip in egg (2 beaten) and more breadcrumbs and deep fry. Voilà a pre-party nibble. There's something truly party-like about deep-frying things isn't there? I think they'd be pretty nice. And you could do almost everything the day before.

As she says in her introduction to her Savouries section:

"don't disregard their importance, as they will be the first thing you offer to guests ... Savouries should just flirt with the taste buds and appetite."

I tried for a while to find a very similar recipe from somebody else, but gave up in the end. Almost all of the recipes I did find, that at first sight looked to be the same thing, were of whole mushrooms coated in breadcrumbs and things. However, here are two more perhaps worth a look - the first is Fried mushroom meatballs from a website called Gourmandelle. They are indeed very similar although the writer seems to have served them with a sauce of some kind. The others are Mushroom arancini - well why not? Made with a mushroom risotto, so rather more complicated. From a website called Simple Home Edit, which is a slightly odd title it seems to me.

I should probably flick through the book again to see if I have missed something wonderful - now that we eat more vegetarian meals and I have a vegetarian granddaughter as well.

YEARS GONE BY

August 12

2024 - Into the frying pan

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Nothing

2021 - delicious. magazine

2020 - Missing

2019 - Turmeric can do anything

2018 - The marmalade challenge

2017 - Rabbits - lots out there but not in the shops

2016 - This goes with that