Nourish Me

cold

You know, this city place of ours - the office is a more appropriate name, and I vow, as of this very moment, to refer to it only as such for ever more - is a dark, cold place. Sure, home - by which I mean the country - is colder technically (by at least 5 degrees regularly, or so the themometer tells me), but down here in Melbourne, you can feel the vitamin d draining away with each step taken across the threshold. Today is sunny out, but you'd never know. Counting the days to the Solstice? Hell yes. 

Persimmon season seemed all too brief this year. Probably my highly over-active imagination playing tricks, but I would have liked more nonetheless. P'raps there's still time. (?) 

Am making a lusty looking bottle of the pear liqueur in Diana Henry's Salt, Sugar, Smoke, and really wishing I'd bought the UK copy of the book rather than accidentally buying the US version. (Also, faffing while I should be doing something else that is rather important, but the cold got under my skin this afternoon).   

 

 

an honest kitchen: makeovers

Hey, Kathryn, Luisa and I have just released another issue of An Honest Kitchen. It's our 6th! Six issues sounds pretty good to me, and though each has felt quite different, their release never ceases to give me a little thrill. This time we've taken an idea a reader sent us and run with it, rescuing some classic family-favourite meals and updating them. Makeovers is available right now, over here 

An Honest Kitchen: Makeovers

31st of May

Lunch, late last week. The 31st of May, obviously. Quick-pickled cabbage and fennel, salad from the garden and some cooked-that-morning-for-the-coming-week quinoa topped with, be still my beating heart, a dollop of cashew sour cream. Lesh used it in something she posted on the twits recently, maybe it was rolled up in a super-clever beetroot and nori roll (?). All I knew was that I had to try making some myself, prontissimo.

Too easy. Soak a cup of cashews in water overnight. Next day, drain and rinse. Into a food processor they go. Add 1/4 cup of cold water, some salt, a teaspoon or two of cider vinegar and the juice of half a lemon. Whiz for at least 3 minutes is what all the recipes suggest, but I lose interest (and my hearing) after about 1 1/2, so mine's and always just a tiny bit on the wrong side chunky. Suits me just fine. 

 

crackers

Every time I pick up Nigella Lawson's How to Eat some new gem falls into my lap, some fresh insight into who Nigella was pre-Charles Saatchi, way back when her husband was dying of tongue cancer and she was flying along, writing so intelligently, at her peak. As a book, let alone a book about cooking, it is entirely absorbing, something Salman Rushdie, a quote of whose graces the back jacket, and I can agree upon. Flipping through, searching for the intro to digestive biscuits, witty words wedged into my brain years ago, I stumbled across this aching confession toward the back of the book, in her feeding babies chapter,

 

When I was young, I was so often made, to the point of torture, to eat up every cold, congealing thing on my plate, that I now can't help but finish up everything in sight, on my plate or other people's. This might be a polite party trick, but it doesn't make for a serene life or stable weight.       

 

Why do I love this excerpt with all of my being?

The Nigella she lays bare in that final sentence feels substantive, honest and intelligent in a way that her latter books do not. Can not. A raw, uncomfortable resonance with my own complex relationship with greed/food-as-reward in there? Yes. Mostly though it's because of this one, rare thing: serious food writers do not casually admit things that make them vulnerable. She's rather wonderful in pre-Nigella-on-the-telly mode in How to Eat. A favourite book because she's so utterly on form.   

It's a leap from digestives to crackers, but not a large one. It is, however, a giant leap from Nigella Lawson to healthy baking, but that's what I sat down here to write about, and delicious, gluten-free crackers ye shall have. Nigella in her new, slimmer shape will not, I am sure, mind one bit. 

Swore black and blue that a return to bookselling would not increase the girth of my bookshelf, but who was I kidding? Bloody hopeless. Two new books, two new cracking cracker recipes.

Jude Blereau's brown rice and chia crackers in her excellent Wholefood Baking (on the right) are, admittedly, a whole lot more work than the unthinkably simple seed crackers from Green Kitchen Stories (on the left).  Both have their relative merits - Blereau's are a genuine revelation and you'll have to buy the book for that recipe - but let me say this straight up: the easier choice, for once in this 'ole life, is what everyone swoops upon. 

simple, addictive seed crackers

Slightly (very slightly) adapted from Green Kitchen Stories pretty new book in that I make less - the full version goes just as quickly as the half, and they are really an unskilled sort of simple to make. Some specialist ingredients, but a good health food shop should have most of these on hand.   

Set your oven to 150 C. In a roomy bowl mix together 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds, 1/4 cup of sesame seeds, 1/4 cup of hemp seeds (use more sunflower if you canot find)  with 1/6 cup of linseeds, 1/2 cup of quinoa or amaranth flour and a fat pinch of salt. Pour in 1/8 cup of olive oil and 1/2 cup of water. Whisk well. 

Despite what Kathryn and I think about baking paper, this is one occasion you'll want a sheet. Use it to line a baking tray. Pour the cracker batter on top. Smooth out with a spatula, right to the edges of the paper, as thin as you can go. Bake for 25 minutes. Peel the paper off the mixture, which will be well-set and slightly brittle, and cut into cracker shapes with a large, sharp knife. Rustic is good. Return to the tray, then the oven until crisp and golden. They say 30 minutes, but my oven takes about 10 minutes, so keep checking. Cool before carefully setting them out and keeping your wits about you.

 

 

It's felt a bit quiet around here of late. There's been big changes going on deep within me, beyond the busy-ness and faster-than-light forgetfulness of the internet. The web has the kind of pace that, once you step off, makes dropping back into it difficult. I'm not entirely sure I want to keep up.  Not sure I even know how to anymore.

Feels as though there are more important things to attend to, and, for the most part, attend to them I have. 

I've gone back to work, to bookselling. For years I resisted because I viewed it as a kind of failure. In fact, I felt sure it was absolutely the wrong move when everything was so pointedly heading Onward and Upward. I was actually afraid - genuinely fearful - of going back to work because I thought it would mean that that work was the work that defined me, as it had for years before, but the truth is working without the safety net of a regular income is very hard, much more fear-inducing than I'd ever let on. There are also days, I'm not at all embarassed to say, when the only decent out loud conversation I've had is with the cat.

Which is not to say that puss doesn't have anything decent to contribute, but it was obviously Time. Being surrounded with books and talk about them all day, once or twice a week, makes my heart swell in a way that I can't quite put into words. The upshot is that I can make art and earn a wage. Who'd've thought? Thus far, I'm loving it - no responsibility, just good, old-fashioned bookselling. It suits me well.    

Then there was the horror of a summer we had which got me thinking about the garden, about what it's best for us to grow and when, and I think I've come up with a solid plan. Our dry, endless summer will be all about the no-fuss things that grow best without much attention (tomatoes, especially) and the cooler months, when there is rainfall up on the ranges, will be the real working months for us. I planted out some garlic this weekend, chicories and mustards, pak choy, that sort of thing. Much more doable, with the potential for an actual break when the holidays arrive.  

But for all my claims of not wanting to talk food much anymore, it's almost unavoidable. I'm seeing it in a new way. With a great deal of help from Lesh I've made significant changes to my diet and lifestyle, and slowly I'm losing some of that weight that accumulated while I sat down to write about food. Lesh is great, guys - she's done so much for me that, like returning to books, I can't quite put it into words. Lesh got me back into the kitchen, but in a significantly different way: I prep and plan meals now to free up my brain to think about other things.

I feel like a dunce saying it, but not cooking on the hop every night? Good god, it's completely life-changing.    

Cooking lots of things on one morning a week in preparation is revelatory, and I've a hunch that Deborah Madison's anise beets might just be the most brilliant addition to my cooking in years. You peel a few big beetroots, dice them up into 1cm chunks, toss them in oil and roast them until they are cooked and as golden as something so startlingly red can get. You then crush a clove of garlic with scrunchy salt, peppercorns and a good teaspoon of fennel seeds and pound to a paste. Pour in sherry vinegar and olive oil in a ratio of 1:1 and toss through the hot beetroot. Into the fridge it goes so you can dip into it for salads and breakfasts and who knows what else during the week. You should know that it's particularly nice with cooked quinoa, some chickpeas, chopped roasted almonds and some slices of fresh fennel.  

Anyway, that's me. You?