Nourish Me

how i learned not to drink

One of my favourite writers, Kingsley Amis (and yes, I do know he was a complete arse, thank you) was a well-known boozehound. In his excellent and often side-splittingly funny "Everyday Drinking", Amis describes the way in which the typical hangover takes 2 directions: the first, what he calls the Physical Hangover or PH, is the way your body responds to the damage wreaked the night before. The second, and I would argue more troubling hangover, is the Metaphysical one, or the MH: this is where we question our actions, wonder what we said and did and worry endlessly about the residual carnage incurred by a night on the tiles. It's a typically witty observation the MH and, like all wise ideas, rooted in truth.     

For years I put myself through both on more occasions than I'd like to admit. A proper PH feels terrible, but the MH? That's infinitely worse. 

And for years I'd've told you that I didn't have a problem with alcohol. On paper, or in casual conversation, you'd probably have thought so, too. Sure, my twenties were awash with the stuff like a lot of the people I surrounded myself with, and I often drank for all the wrong reasons - unhappy, alone, miserable in my working life. The one reason that stands out above all others is the one I can only name with the benefit of hindsight my mid-forties affords: I was trying to fill a gaping void of my own damned making, looking for something - love, creativity, connection - through a glass. 

I remember the first time that I thought, perhaps, I drank too much. A friend of a good friend told me that she'd embraced a macrobiotic diet and, "no longer came home from work to drink half a bottle of wine". Half a bottle? I was regularly finishing one off. I was 26. I felt deeply, deeply ashamed.  Metaphysical hangovers became a normal part of life.   

On I went, though. I wasn't always unhappy, there were moments of great levity in life and I have always loved to laugh, but I seemed to be nursing hangovers and - worse still - was unable to quit the smoking I took up to be cool at art school. At 28 I decided to I was gonna have to learn to like myself. So I gave up smoking. I started walking the hills of Bronte and Clovelly in the early hours of the morning. I did, indeed, like myself a whole lot more by the end of that year.

 I met my now-husband when I was 29; uprooted myself from Sydney and moved south to Melbourne at 30, a big adventure and a new, improved life. Our first proper date was a long boozy lunch getting to know one another in a wonderful restaurant. The wine was so much better than what I could afford and we drank a lot of the stuff. We talked about art, we drew on the paper tablecloth and fell in love.   

By my early thirties and with occasional exceptions I only drank on the weekends. Those weekends, though, they were rarely sober and I began to feel anxious that a life without alcohol - especially a social life without a drink in hand - on the weekend was beyond my grasp. In truth it remained so until this, my 46th, year.  

My early forties were different, though. I was armed with creative pursuits that made my heart feel good and, slowly, slowly, became more comfortable with, well, with me. Then, at 44, I began sleeping badly if I even had one drink - even half a beer and I'd be wired awake all night long. I read Jill Stark's excellent High Sobriety and found myself nodding. I knew all of this! So. I took a 6 week break from booze in the lead up to xmas that year. Finally, the beast was broken. I've drunk a little here and there since, but that familiar sensation of falling into the carefree world of intoxication isn't as desirable somehow. I simply want more from life. And sleep. I LOVE sleep.   

How I did it was to realise how senseless it all is; how important I am to the small group of people that love me for who I am. That there's no safe level of drinking alcohol. That weekends are for the active pleasures of rising early to garden, to paint and sew and laugh and just feel GOOD. All of that and perimenopause, of course. Add booze to your menopausal flushes and you'll be ab-so-lutely miserable. Ditto caffeine, but that's another story. But learning what a drink means to me socially - like a cigarette held between the fingers, a drink is a prop for the hands if you're the nervous-type - helped too. I started making myself a fancy non-alcoholic drink of some kind to fill that role. And dammit, but it worked.      

I've avoided this space because I rarely have much to say about food these days, and I'd hemmed myself in in a small way by focusing on food for the 10 years it ran. Yet it turns out I have something to say about drinking, a not entirely unrelated subject.      

 

 

april the first

Two older men - the word elderly confers a status neither deserves - in as many weeks have expressed appalling, bigoted attitudes toward powerful women while browsing in the shop, in conversation you see, and both times I have pulled them up and told them - calmly - that I will not tolerate those ideas. The first subsequently stole the book he was so proud of being a hateful part of, the other, just yesterday, backed right down and spent a good sum of money. Sensed he'd gone too far. The real shame, of course, is that neither of these men are likely to change their thinking any time soon. I tell the story to illustrate this simple point: the less we tolerate ideas so abhorent to our own, the more we open our hearts. Twenty years ago I'd've been too scared to say anything in response. These days? No fear. 

The equinox now behind us, my gaze shifts internally with the season. This new moon - the beginning of the astrological calender - has me thinking hard about some of the things unlocked of late. Truth be told, my gaze has been inward for some time; I will be 43 fairly soon and time feels precious in a way that it has not before. In dreams I search for keys to unlock some long held stuff, stuff that, annoyingly, is just as elusive in waking hours, but that's not stopping me. I'll get to the bottom of my creative-spiritual-sleeping isss-ewes when the time is right.

Sounds a bit heavy, but honestly, it's just the normal internal dialogue written out loud.

 

We've been renovating on the hill. That's contributing to bad sleep, I am sure, as well as a lack of rhythm. I had an hilarious conversation with another male customer, one who is delightful and au fait with the female of the species, who makes his living as an artist. Chatting at the back counter about Goya and other important things, I told him at one stage that I am embarrassed to be having middle class conversations about renovating. John kindly reminded me it's my sacred space up there, where creative work gets done and that it should be made into a bigger space - however modestly one is doing so. Letting Go is turning out to be the theme for this year. 

 

 

Wish I had some food to share, but apart from vats of hummus (beetroot hummus is the current fave) and 101 ways with zucchini and tomatoes, we're eating super simple food. Here's something interesting, though. I used to be addicted to potato chips (what the Brits call 'crisps') but of late, no longer desire them. At all. I do not know what happened, but I'll take it.      

 

A HUGE thank you to all involved in the International Court's decision on whaling. Made me cry with joy this morning. Hooray!  

 

stamp

Finally found a use for the stamp I had made in Hanoi: labels on jars of things to keep on the shelf.

Made a batch of Laurie Colwin's lemon chutney yesterday. A bit too salty, and maybe a touch too sweet, it was enough for 2 good-size jars, not the 4 she suggests, but the fault is partly mine I suspect and besides, it's a joy to read Colwin while stirring a pot of something that makes the house smell that good. I'm beginning to get things feeling a lot like home up in the hills, one year in. A shelf of jarred things in the pantry only feeds that cosy, domestic goddess notion. I can see why Molly of Orangette likes Colwin so much - a thread of charming domestic storytelling links the two and I am grateful for the introduction. Colwin's food writing is hugely enjoyable, fits like a comfortable old cardigan, all that breezy New York Jewish gorgeousness, near-perfect recipes and smart - very - writing.

elizabeth david

Years ago Cath told me how she'd devoured Elizabeth David one holiday and I remember thinking, later, how I longed to feel that way about a serious cook's cook, felt disappointed that I somehow hadn't quite got David, having started French Provincial Cooking on four separate occasions and put it back each time. It didn't speak a food language I was familiar with, but the seed of something, in that conversation, was sown. We agreed more David was needed on the shelves but never got around to ordering any. Good bookshops are like that. Busy busy.

These days David is totally my cup of tea, a beautiful writer full-stop, just the kind of food writing I crave. I particularly like that she's actually a bit of a nutter, a very scholarly one mind you, drawn to ranting about the impracticality of brightly coloured porcelain, making bold statements about taste, but with a definite, slightly nutty edge. Most super-smart folk are thus cut in my experience. That fine line between genius and mad.

Dreaming of warmer days, I ordered a copy of her 1955 classic Summer Cooking recently. This, from the chapter titled "Improvised Cooking For Holidays and Week-Ends", is pure E.D. gold:

The kitchens of holiday houses, whether cramped and larderless, or vast, bare, with a day's march between sink and stove, usually have a stony bleakness in common. However adequate the beds or satisfactory the view, the kitchen equipment will probably consist of a tin frying pan, a chipped enamel saucepan, one Pyrex casserole without a lid, and a rusty knife with a loose handle.       

She then goes on to suggest some surprisingly practical solutions. Highly recommended.  

50 Best

Jo, fellow Guardian- AND list-lover, emailed me this morning with a link to The Observer Food Monthly's 50 best cookbooks list. Thank you. I love these sort of things, and the top 10 is, I think, interesting.

Thoughts:

There's very little Elizabeth David on the list, which I find curious given it has such a very british bent to it and only one (really?) Nigel Slater. Kitchen Diaries is, for me, the best food book ever published - beautiful words; beautiful to hold; beautiful, beautiful photographs by Jonathan Lovekin printed on (beautiful) matt paper. Farking gorgeous. Easily my number one. 

Pleased to see Madhur Jaffrey make an appearance. Her Eastern Vegetarian Cooking is one of the most useful books I own. I love the Book of Jewish Food (# 3) by Claudia Roden because she offers an eloquent, sephardic, way into understanding the culture of the blokes around me, and her shakshouka is why I'll be planting lots of peppers and tomatoes in the next garden. 

Deborah Madison's 'Greens' is there, but Local Flavors is, I reckon, better. The Savory Way has my all-time favourite dish of zucchini cooked with cloves, crushed basil leaves and fresh, early-summer organic cream. Simmered with new garlic and super fresh corn. Jesus, it's early summer on a plate, that dish.

Madison is the sexiest seasonal eating gets, especially if you have a garden. Olney, at # 1, means that we are living in an age of vegetable-loving and that's a very good thing in my opinion.

I love peasant food and always have.  

I remember unpacking Fushia Dunlop's Sichuan Cooking in the shop and thinking, this is a keeper. Too much pork for us, but it's still a keeper. Australian David Thompson's book Thai Food came in at # 7 and is, I think, a glaring omission from my own shelf but again, I wonder how useful it is to someone who cooks neither pork or shellfish? David Tanis - a true artist - deserves to be there, but as much for the stunning photographs by Christopher Hirschimer as Tanis' lovely words.

Next on my list? An original (g'ah) 1965 copy of Len Deighton's Action Cook Book is something I want very, very badly now, and that's what a good list offers, you see. My current reading includes Kingsley Amis' Everyday Drinking which I am enjoying immensely. What are you enjoying?

Red vulcan

The silverbeet "red vulcan" is currently going off.

Rocket, too.

Ditto the calendulas. And the parsley.

We're on the move again, soon. I've started packing up books from time to time. Eleanour Sinclair Rohde's Garden of Herbs (1920) warns that "...in England old-fashioned gardeners will often tell you they never transplant parsley, as it would bring misfortune on everyone in the house".

I have a forest of the stuff.

We're eating a lot of parsley in preparation 'round here, I can tell you...     

Never the same, twice

Toward the end of the phone call, one in which Jo, composed but ever droll, reported a significant personal breakthrough over her weekend, things turned to dinner; “Do you really, ‘never cook the same thing twice’?” 

Truthfully, no. It's not intentional; rather, I enjoy cooking and find there’s room for improvement in almost any recipe. I seem to spend a fair chunk of reading time noodling through cookbooks, too. At lunch, over breakfast with tea, and even, very occasionally, before bed. (Though I think the latter terribly bad form and have, this year, finally put a stop to it.) I’m often found marking pages in cookbooks – naughty, dog-eared corners-turned-down marking because, ultimately, the cookbook should be a working object – and making notes of my own all over the margins.

Sometimes, I even catch myself thinking about the next meal, staring wistfully out of the window whilst washing dishes from the last. All of this informs rather than dictates the cooking. A dish may be so good that it crops up frequently, but it's never the same, twice. I'm often braising a dish of baby carrots, or fennel, or celery (or all three) before I know it, as if the contents of the vegetable drawer switch on some kind of kitchen autopilot, but I cannot help myself. Tinkering is one of lifes little pleasures.

I do, however, want to cook this simple dish again in almost – almost – the same way. The grape, olive and herb topping is very clever; a gratifying combination of sweet-salty-bitter just made for the kind of can’t-be-fussed summer cooking we’re rapidly approaching. I’ll be serving this often over summer with a loaf of good bread, a salad of snappy greens, a bottle of something cold and some stone fruit to finish. The cicadas are already trilling out there. Summer's upon us.   

Baked ricotta with grapes & olives

If my habit of bookmarking is naughty, Karen Martini's liberal use of olive oil is damnation on a stick. I love it – cooking without it would be unimaginable - but don't want to drown in the stuff. If you’re feeling underweight (ha!) by all means, follow her excellent recipe. I have a hunch that it may work with fresh silken tofu, though I am yet to try the idea. 

 
Take 250g of fresh ricotta cheese* and drain it very well. An hour in a colander over the sink should see you right. Preheat the oven to 200 C.

Using a little olive oil, lightly grease a small ovenproof dish. Slice the drained ricotta thickly and push it carefully into the base. Take a handful of seedless grapes (red, green, whatever) and slice them into rounds. Pit, if you need to, and roughly chop 2 heaped tablespoons of cured olives (black, green, cracked, whole, whatever) and chop a palmful of fresh thyme and a larger palmful of fresh oregano. Scatter the grapes, olives and herbs over the ricotta, add a little salt and pepper and drizzle the top with a tablespoon, maybe two, of delicious olive oil. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the ricotta is firm and golden at its edges. Cool before devouring as per above.   

*Do not attempt this with the ricotta stacked in the supermarket fridge – it’s simply the wrong texture and you will be seriously disappointed. Ask for a wedge at the deli counter instead.

Gastronomer's Bookshelf

The Gastronomer's Bookshelf is open for your browsing pleasure. A world of cookbook reviews to explore.

My little contribution, a review of Arto der Haroutunian's exceptional book of Middle Eastern Vegetarian food, can be found right here.       

Cookbook addicts beware...enter at your peril...

Any cookbooks you're currently adoring? I've made a little space recently, you see... 

As follows

Back. Well, almost. Bear with me while the year settles in. Changes are afoot, some of them downright scary, but it’s good to feel a little edgy with an entire twelve months stretching ahead, right? Right?

Hmm.

To seasonal, festive fare, then. Highlights, as follows:

Bernard and Trevor. The former, a salmon weighing in at a hefty three kilos, was poached in my mother’s shiny new fish kettle, and served with a phenomenal South East Asian sauce and the latter, a snapper with a solid, dignified jaw, roasted, whole, for New Years Eve. Tiny new potatoes, pebble-sized, wax-fleshed and butter yellow, were cooked until their taught skins burst in salty water, then drained and crushed into a sauce somewhat similar to this. I even danced to Bob Dylan (which is possible, but only after several glasses of wine).

Elizabeth David’s mushroom and vine leaf dish. The leaves, small ones filched while standing, tip-toed on a wobbly ladder, from an unruly grapevine that creeps between our fence and the huge, empty garden next door, became crisp-edged, their own dark, wild juices mingling with those of the mushrooms, the garlic and a load of olive oil. Beautiful.

Stone fruit poached in light syrup, scented first with rosewater and later, here in our kitchen, with lime leaves. Bloody marvellous. Making yet more, right now. 

Cherry clafouti. Stone your cherries if you must, but know this; sucking the fleshy pits then spitting them out is more than half the fun. But do warn people. Loss of teeth during dessert is decidedly not fun.

Imam Biyaldi, from Claudia Roden, made, successfully I thought, with rather less oil than the legendary quantity that, legend has, made the sultan swoon. The zucchini version, below, using a few of our first crookneck squash and a handful of our beans, taken from this little gem by Arto der Haroutunian, is, I think, one step better, though I’d suggest you halve the lemon juice. Lemons here are huge, juicy beasts; English ones perhaps not so.

 

Ripe cheeks of mango. Sliced off, splayed open and sprinkled with chilli salt. Your lips may smart, but it's so, so good. 

 

And so, happy new year to all; to each and every one of you lovely, gorgeous people. May 2009 brim with possibility, hope and, if you seek it, the courage to change. As Wendy says, ‘Don’t let the grim blot out the great’. Wise words, friends.

I'm almost ready. Are you?