Nourish Me

Patience

A Hasselblad is, as I was told when I first held him, many photographer's dream camera. This I've known for 20 years, and there is a certain magic to the way he sits so comfortably in the hand, the way his leaf shutter thunks, a serious sound that still makes me feel slightly unworthy of owning such a beautiful thing. The learning curves - for there are quite a few - are much harder to navigate than, at first, imagined. I shot almost an entire roll of Velvia slide film with wrong speed dialled into my lightmeter recently, rushing ahead of myself as I am, so often, wont to do.  

Patience is a skill, one I'm trying very hard to master. Slowly, slowly.  

Leaving

It's cold out, wet too, and I'm sitting here with an unexpected gap in the afternoon. In the oven are two trays of vegetables, tossed with oil and sea salt, roasting away, filling the house - well, only the kitchen in a house of this size - with their delicious out-of-season fug. Truth be told, I've committed a number of culinary crimes against the season this winter and today's miserable outlook made me long for the weekend of sunshine and bare feet just passed.

Fat eggplants and shiny red peppers were begging to come home. Some days you just give in.  

Packing has begun. It's a task I seriously love. I am not nostalgic as a rule - I have an unflinching policy about what stays or goes - but for some reason, the fact that we are moving from this large, cold house soon has me pining for the light we'll be leaving behind. It's been the best teacher I have ever had, this place, even better than the last. In more ways than I could have imagined. 

We're standing right on the edge of some pretty exciting and hectic times, and I am finally, just today, as the sky closes in and the house begins to freeze over yet again, ready to face them.

Between heavy showers

Picked, between heavy showers, last Saturday.

Debating

For some time now, I've been debating whether or not to keep this little blog going. I have been cooking, quite a lot in fact, but I've not been cooking from recipes and somehow, I never seem to remember to write what I did up. Often it's because I've been enjoying myself too much to bother. Then there's the photos, which, it would be fair to say, have taken over. But a friend reminded me today that it's okay to not always do things to formula; that it's okay to keep things simple. Debate over.  

So. Here are some pine mushrooms from June which I cannot remember how I cooked, but whose little skirts I loved. Especially the teeny tiny one on the left.

(Comments are back, yay!)

Celery salt

...is why you buy a whole head of luscious, organic celery, rather than those silly plastic-wrapped half bunches.

Wendy's celery salt. Brilliant.

Holga

Half-toy, half-pretending-to-be-serious medium format camera, the Holga is tricky to get right, but when you do, your heart will leap and make the wait - between shooting and getting the film back - that much sweeter.

Film is magic. Nothing proves that more than a cheap, plastic Holga.  

My tips? Load it up and go, but the following are things I've lived and learned along the way.

Helpful: This incredibly useful website will be your friend, especially the Troubleshooting section. Bookmark it immediately.

Read the manual. I must admit to being very bad at this usually, but the Holga manual only takes about 15 minutes to read from back to front and back again, even if you're a slow reader. It's about as basic as a camera gets, the Holga, but it makes dreamy photos because of its simplicity. Go with it. 

Relinquish control. At least for a while. You can learn to wrestle it back later on, but start out expecting little and you'll have much more fun, I promise. 

Throw away the lens cap. You will forget, you see - voice of experience, here - to take it off and waste both film and money. You only get 12 negatives per roll of 120 film. Wastage is bad.

Tape it up. Holga's are well known for leaking light into the film. Sometimes this will work in your favour, but mostly you'll just want to cry. Grab a roll of gaffer/electrical tape and seal that camera back tightly, baby.

A pain, but worth the effort. Really.

Use the 'N' setting for a while. It's tempting to play with the 'B' (bulb) setting, but stick with 'N' (normal) 'cos otherwise everything you shoot will be a blur. Again, you'll cry and again, wastage is b-a-d.

Oh, and shoot in strong, natural light.     

Take it with you everywhere. Weighing it at a tiny 250 grams, a Holga weighs less than the average paperback...so don't leave the house without it. You never know, you see, when the light - and the moment - will be just right.

New

I've a new camera, one that makes beautiful 6X6 cm square negatives, full of depth and clarity but which requires large amounts of concentration and thought to be put into every single shot. The waist-level viewfinder is half the fun of using him - it's a totally different system of looking.

Meet the blad. Much to learn.

(I'm turning the comments off for a little while as I seem to being spammed by people selling a variety of things, none of them food-related...)

Brining

Last year was, for me, The Year of the Cauliflower. I've never liked the blanket of white sauce it sits beneath in the dreaded, classic cauliflower cheese, nor the combination of said sauce and still-watery florets squeaking against my teeth, but roasting a cauli two years ago changed everything.

This autumn I set out to make 2010 the year I learned to tolerate, maybe even like, cabbage. I didn't think I'd actually learn to love cabbage, but that's what seems to have happened, and I count that as a resounding success. Kathryn had mentioned brining cabbage at some stage in conversation and I trust her implicitly in matters Cabbage, so jotted it down. Salt - and there's a lot of salt used here, most of which, fear not, dissolves away - draws liquid from the cabbage (or radishes, or carrots...you get the idea) making it easier to digest. Which was, ya know, the problem cabbage and I had. 

Typically, Kathryn was right. Exceptionally good. Mine is taken, mostly, from Mark Bittman.

Salted cabbage

Take half a head of a small cabbage - all are good here - halve it again, discard the core, and slice the rest. Finely looks neat, but who's got all day? Chop as you see fit. Toss the cabbage in a shallow bowl with 1 tablespoon each of sea salt, mirin, and rice vinegar. Press a plate on top, weight it down with something heavy - 3 or 4 tins of tomatoes, a heavy mortar - and leave for 1 hour. A little longer won't hurt, especially if you've cut lazily. Drain in a colander, shake over the sink then quickly pop it back into the bowl. No rinsing please.

Toss the wilted cabbage with anything you like. Chopped parsley, tahini, more mirin, a little sesame oil and some pink-pickled ginger are good. Eat.      

 

Seed

Artist Sophie Munns has asked me to take part in her postcard show, Homage to the Seed. Sophie is the artist-in-residence at the Botanic Gardens in Brisbane - do you know her wonderful blog? The theme, given that 2010 is the U.N.'s International Year of Biodiversity, is seeds, and if you want to take part (and it's an open invite, guys) see below:

 

P.S. Sorry about offering a link to the Australian Government's website up there, but the UN one seemed really hard to navigate for some reason. Anyway. They're in my good books at the 'mo. Well, we'll see.

P.P.S. Read this. Best World Cup story yet. Makes you look at calamari rings in a completely new way...

    

Radicchio

Bitter leaves make me salivate, and none more so than the deep dark red variety. This has not always been the case, in fact it seems to be a fairly recent addiction, one borne of ageing (somewhat) gracefully, as though my taste buds have, at last, reached maturity. 

Bitter isn't easy. Bitter requires input, but then, why should things always be simple? The inclination toward habitually-sweet should be kicked out of every last one of us beyond the age of thirty, and the ability to balance flavours on a plate signals a fine cook at work. Spears of pale green witlof (endive, chicory) in a salad with mild blue cheese and brown-sugar roasted walnuts get you started, coaxing harshness to sweetness, a classic combination.

I dismissed The Vegetarian Option by Simon Hopkinson initially, thrown by the inclusion, second recipe in, of a chicken stock (says she who any quick perusal of her archive will reveal a beast of the very same ilk...). But, like the bitter I've grown to desire, his is sophisticated food, flesh-free, for the grown-ups. The crescendo of bitter must surely be the exquisite Wilted radicchio with green sauce on page 120, a dish tamed not by dairy (too easy), but by a herbal, mustard- and caper-based dressing, and served with very thin slices of hard-boiled egg, cut with the utmost of care, alongside. Elegant eating for two.

Seek the book out and give it some time; the worthwhile things in this life are rarely - if indeed ever - easy.