Un mélange
- rosemary
- Aug 25
- 9 min read
Mélange: a mixture, or a group of different things or people"
Cambridge English Dictionary
time for some oddments, and it's amazing how new ways of saying oddments keep cropping up. Today it's the turn of mélange - a french word for a mixture for which Vocabulary.com rather amusingly did a bit of putdown:
"Why call it a mixture when it can be a melange? A tricolor vegetable melange makes even carrots, peas, and corn sound like gourmet cuisine. A melange is any combination of anything, but the word always heightens the glamour quotient.
The French have a way of making simple words sound like romantic entreaties of love. Call any random assortment of things a melange, or as it's sometimes spelled, mélange, and voila, you've given it a sparkle that plain old words like combination, mixture, and blend just cannot convey. This word — along with a melange of other attributes, like great bread and pastries, delicious wine, and fine fashion — are all reasons why we love the French. All that accordion music? Not so much." Vocabulary.com
But there are actually some specific foodie things called mélange - three that I found. There's one for textiles too but I'll ignore that.
The first is imaginary - Spice - the mélange that is an essential part of the planet of Dune in Frank Herbert's book of the same name - but of course that doesn't stop people having a go at making their own version, though I doubt, as the author says, that it would turn your eyes a brilliant blue. In the book it is described by Frank Herbert thus:
"the flavor is “never twice the same… It’s like life—it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.” Frank Herbert/Dune
The second is another spice mix but a real one this time - and French like it's name - Mélange classique. There are a few recipes online. Jill Norman - Elizabeth David's editor and executor, has this one:
5 dried bay leaves; 2 teaspoons dried thyme; 1 teaspoon each of dried marjoram and rosemary; 2 teaspoons each of grated nutmeg and cloves; 1 teaspoon of cayenne and 1 1/2 teaspoons each of white peppercorns and coriander seeds. According to World Spice:
"Melange Classique is an all purpose seasoning for stews and roasts, pate, stuffing and bean dishes. Melange Classique will work well as a rub on any meat, particularly lamb, duck and pork."
The last is a particular coffee - just when you thought there couldn't really be any more, although this one is actually quite old. Not generally found in Australia, unless you are in a European/Viennese kind of establishment, because it has its origins in 18th century Vienna, where they had a special medium-light roast of coffee. To this was added a generous amount of milk, hot and also frothy and later on honey was added to the mix, so that you get this rather luscious layered look - so it seems to me it's best served in a glass. I saw some in cups but that rather lost the effect, and just made it look like a cappucino. You make it like this:
"Boil the milk. Then froth the milk until foamy and lighter using a frother or a hand held mixer.
Pour 1-2 tablespoons of honey in the bottom of a glass. I use 1 TBSP because I find that 2 TBSP makes the coffee melange too sweet.
Next, fill the glass with hot milk. Then spoon the froth or foam on the top of the coffee drink.
Finally, using the back of a teaspoon, slowly and carefully pour the hot coffee over the spoon allowing it to go down the inside of the glass or cup and layer on top of the hot milk.
The coffee will layer on top of the hot milk and below the froth.
Voila, a coffee melange. Admire your work of art. Then, stir to combine ingredients before drinking." Sur le Plat
An unexpected bounty for mélange. So just a few extra things to mix in.
A herb hack from Alice Zaslavsky
This was an aside to a recipe for Box grater broccoli pasta. Just thread a herb stem through the coarse teeth and pull from the inside – the leaves will slip right off. Well that's what she says. Personally I suspect this doesn't really work. I haven't tried it as yet, mostly because I've taken to just getting a bunch of parsley, chopping off the bottom stalks, and then slicing the rest of the bunch all the way to the top. Although I do mostly cook the stems with onions or whatever you are starting your recipe with. She says it mostly just works for parsley and coriander, but maybe sometimes mint. She grates the broccoli for the recipe too. Just be careful when your fingers get close to the grater.
You may not be able to read this article in the New York Times, which was highlighted in my Smitten Kitchen newsletter. But give it a go if you are interested in the weird world of haute cuisine. Ella Quittner is the author of this piece which highlights, an haute cuisine trend which really makes you wonder. For example the three cakes in the left-hand photograph are described thus:
"From left: the New York City-based pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz’s nasturtium leaf and spring pea-topped olive oil cake with matcha mousse; basil olive oil cake with pistachio buttercream, vanilla bean whipped cream, Castelfranco chicories and baby napa cabbage; and perilla leaf-coated salted cocoa cake with toasted perilla-and-cocoa ganache."
Suggested reasons for this development are the need for fine dining chefs, to create every more notable things to get the attention - fine dining is in crisis apparently; rebellion; experimentation with the concept of mixing sweet and savoury, which of course is not a new thing. Still this is a bit extreme isn't it? The writer of the piece describes them as having a deliberately Surrealist quality - which seems quite apt to me. Art rather than dessert don't you think? I mean how would you slice into it anyway?
Well a cheating version thereof was my inspiration from this month's Coles Magazine. Junda Khoo is apparently a Malaysian restaurateur who created these laksa bombs - as shown in the Instagram photograph - the 'real' thing. Fundamentally it's a laksa mix of shrimp and chicken, stuffed into wonton wrappers, and finished in a coconut based sauce. They do look good and I could be tempted to try some one day if only I could find the wonton wrappers in Coles. I think this is indeed a unique creation from Junda Khoo, who presented it as a Masterchef challenge apparently. His motivation for the dish according to the magazine is that he felt that if you had an actual bowl of laksa you had no room for anything else, and so he combined all the laksa ingredients into small portions and then put them in a dumpling.
Japchae noodles
I no longer remember where this came from. Maybe an Ottolenghi newsletter. I know I would have noticed that this was yet another thing I knew nothing about, and was therefore a potential blog subject, but I vaguely remember that when I looked into it basically all there was of interest were that these were the glassy kind of noodle and that they were made from sweet potatoes - which you'd have to say is different. Otherwise it's just a stir-fry, which may annoy Asian food afficianados, so apologies. So I found three recipes just in case you felt like trying them out - you can buy the noodles in Coles, so probably Woolworths too. Maybe they were an advertising feature in the Coles magazine and so therefore not a recipe on their website.
Recipe Tin Eats - Nagi describes it as a bit of a stir-fry, a bit of a salad, and her version does look good. Ottolenghi's Japchae with mushrooms appears in a Guardian article which presents three dishes using various kinds of noodles; Japchae - Korean sweet potato noodles - Katrina Woodman/Taste - actually a very useful recipe in the clear way she talks about the ingredients; and from a genuine Korean - My Korean Kitchen Japchae - Korean glass noodle stir fry
This is from Smitten Kitchen - a newsletter that I enjoy, in some ways, mostly because of the articles that she promotes that she has read elsewhere - like that one about the cake or salad thing. But there is almost always at least one recipe that attracts, and as well as being good recipes, they are also entertaining in the way that they are written. This one includes lots of photographs of the process and consists of just five ingredients. It could also be very quick if you used a ready-made pizza base. It's based on a recipe from a nearby gourmet bakery and she uses the baker's (Jim Lahy) dough recipe, but as I said - you can just buy a pizza base or use a flatbread or something similar instead. Next time I have a lot of zucchini - when will that be? - I'm going to make this.
A thought about littering
Further to my posted thoughts about what I found when walking yesterday, in a Guardian article that I recently read about a brand of pre-made cocktails called BuzzBallz, I found this quote:
"You see them around, It's actually really good advertising. They're everywhere"
Which is a somewhat alarming thought is it not? And possibly it's worth further investigation. I tried today however, and did indeed find several learned research kind of articles on the topic, the best of which was from a website called Edie because it wasn't written in marketing jargon. And anyway all of the research articles only gave you the abstract. The rest is behind pay walls.
The general upshot was that it was a topic requiring further research, because it was unclear whether it was indeed good advertising, or whether, in fact, it produced a negative reaction. The article was reporting on one of those academic research papers, and he/she reported that the study found that:
"the more common the product, the more it is associated with litter and this connection was particularly strong for fast-moving consumer goods like snacks, cigarettes, drinks and fast food." and that:
"We only found one other research article that suggested that litter could damage a brand’s image. ... The rest of the marketing literature builds on the “more you see it the more you like it” principle"
Now isn't that alarming? And although I have to say that there seems to be much less litter alongside our roads, than overseas - the picture I chose is much lighter on the litter than all of the others - and my local road had very little really - in spite of that, the litter I saw yesterday did indeed include well-known brands like Toblerone and Krispy Kreme.
It's a bit like the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity - any publicity is good publicity. I can understand the thinking however, because I'm guessing that the brands that turn up as litter are generally 'bad' things, junk food, whose consumers are less likely to be bothered by the notion of litter.
Christmas already
I almost forgot this. This email arrived in my inbox on the 6th of August. But like the litter thing, I was appalled. Christmas! In August? Midwinter?
To tell you the truth I didn't quite understand what it was offering - I think, and extra 2000 points if I just clicked on the appropriate button. Whether the buying that I did had to be associated with Christmas wasn't quite clear. And anyway how could it be? Two very annoying things about this anyway.
Christmas is still three months away. I don't want to start thinking about Christmas now even though of course it makes good sense to buy things appropriate for Christmas that will keep, before the prices go up. It seems to me that every year the Christmas thing starts earlier and earlier, which increases stress. Besides even though I am complaining about this, I don't think that all the Christmas goodies have arrived quite as yet in the shops.
Moreover, Woolworths is becoming increasingly annoying with their constant stream of special offer this and special offfer that. A day does not go by that I don't get at least one of these - sometimes more than one. I could make them spam, but every now and then there is an email that tells you something you need to know. As you probably know by now I have a very slight bias in favour of Coles, anyway, but this sort of over promotion is not helping them to change my mind.
YEARS GONE BY
August 25
2024 - Nothing
2023 - Weight - why do I care?
2022 - Define cooking
2020 - Missing
2019 - Tonic water
2018 - Nothing
2017 - Nothing
2016 - Decisions, decisions
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