Nourish Me

pink peppercorns

Too many pink peppercorns, bought in bulk - 'twas the only way to get them at the time - for a bulgar pilaf of Ottolenghi's that was nice, yes, but only made just that once, so not memorable enough obviously. (It was probably a palaver, I'll be honest). An innate need to use them as food rather than dumping them in the compost, still a legitimate use I say, albeit one with a fair dose of guilt attached to it, meant other uses had to be found. 

Enter Kathryn's Baked Ricotta from the summer edition of AHK, made wintry by subbing olives for the tomatoes and masses of pink peppercorns and a little rosemary for the dried oregano. Baked ricotta presents well, takes a mere 20-30 minutes to cook and makes people happy. Least it does my blokes. 

Set the oven to 220 C. Cut 500g of fresh ricotta - from the deli counter where they will cut you a slice, do not head to the fridge cabinet where you'll get Not Ricotta in small tubs - into thick slices. Pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a baking dish and smoosh it 'round. Arrange ricotta slices in dish, chuck in some olives (pits in, please, just warn peeps before they tuck in), scatter ricotta generously with pink peppercorns and add a little chopped rosemary, then dribble over 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Bake for 20-30 minutes, till ricotta is browning around the edges. Good hot, cold, or somewhere in between. 

  

new/old haunts

It feels good to be back on the other side of the highway. Even though I werk on the posh side, know that shopping strip about as well as I will ever know any in Melbourne, living there was, somehow, not exactly right. I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney for gawdsake. Little wonder I never quite belonged.  

Home, of course, is the country but for the foreseeable future we will still need a place in town from which to operate and the last place was a horror story. The tiny, badly appointed kitchen turned out to be the best thing about the place; the bathroom walls running with water whenever it rained was ultimately soul-destroying. Rent may have been ultra-cheap, but it cost us dearly in mental energy. Last week we moved to a place we now own. Run down but quiet and shady and very private. 

Schmoo and I went for a walk on Tuesday, a short one, exploring new/old haunts. For years we lived in Caulfield and we know these pathways well. Familiar garden styles - less polished, un-designed - and lovely rambling houses, streets with funny doglegs and dead ends, yeshivas and proper milk bars. Flats everywhere. Autumn leaves left in piles where they fall. I very nearly cried.

The new kitchen sink is wonderful. WONDERful! I sleep deeply in the bedroom and wake, refreshed, early enough to get loads done before I tram to werk. The bathroom is dry where it should be, in need of some work but the bath is perfect, a delicious place to soak and float ones feet.  

Dust settling, brain slowly coming back...all is good. Breathe in. Breathe out. Back to normality at long, long last.         

   

isolated

We talked about isolation this long weekend. Peter thinks it's good, sees it as a strength rather than the weakness The Secret Language of Birthdays would have me believe the stars bestowed upon this little Leo. Me? Not so sure. I spent my 20's miserably isolated, exhausted from long days in bookshops and too slow at making plans for weekends to be socially connected. I saw it then as a weakness, one I couldn't claw my way up from. These days I find isolation absolutely necessary for clear creative thinking, and I also have a much richer social life, not full, but balanced, I would say, with the kind of good people I wanted so much twenty years ago. Isn't life interesting?

A few days on my own this week, alone (of human company) in the lush cool of my high-up-on-a-hill garden, an unexpected holiday offered by my boss in December. Frankly, it will do me the world of good right now to spend a few days alone. A friend and I spoke last year about how important it is to get away - from one's spouse, one's friends, the distractions we throw in our paths - and get things done. There are undoubtedly benefits to isolation, but here's what I decided in the car coming back to town this afternoon: I prefer the word solitude. It sits more comfortably, more creatively, and the ability to gain wonder from solitude, that's a true strength.  

 

caldo verde

Look, I feel a bit silly posting a photograph taken with my cracked and battered phone, feel as though it's a bit of cheat, but this bowl of soup managed to a) use an armload of the kale that seems to be all I've been able to grow this year and b) taste much better (so much better) than the sum of its humble parts that I want to say something about both it and the book it came from immediately. As a testament to just how compelling Tod Davies' writing is and, amazingly, how damned fine her Caldo Verde is, I am, as I sit typing, still in dirt-encrusted gear from the farm so committed am I to this bloody marvellous idea. I really need a shower, but the soup is too good to wait.

Basically, you chop an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. You peel 4 or 5 potatoes - an all purpose veering-toward-waxy spud like desiree is good as it will retain some shape in the final gorgeous broth - and, along with a couple of generous spoonfuls of olive oil, bung the lot into a saucepan, cover generously with water and boil, then simmer at a lively pace, all together, occasionally giving the potatoes a bit of squish with a big spoon as you walk by. How long? Really, I cannot say. Long enough to have some perfectly tender chunks of potato left, but so that, mostly, what you have is a silken, pale-and-interesting potato broth. Add salt. Add pepper. Take a walk into the garden and nab an armload of kale. Destalk, slice, and dump into saucepan. Up the heat and boil, hard, for 3 minutes. Ladle into shallow bowls, dress with more olive oil and, because the cabbage and potato combination struck me as being Irish Peasant not just Portugese Peasant, I added a large (a-hem) spoonful of sour cream and, just 'cos Spain is next door, a dusting of smoked paprika which, if you'll forgive me Tod, made it even richer.  

I'm only a couple of chapters in, but Jam Today Too: The Revolution Will Not Be Catered is shaping up to be a brilliant follow up to what's become one of my very favourite books about food, ever.

     

mezze to milk tart: a review

Mezze to Milk Tart: from The Middle East to Africa in my vegetarian kitchen

By Cecile Yazbeck (published by Wakefield Press)

It took a while for Cecile Yazbek's voice to grab me, to seduce me into the kitchen, though now we've been there together half a dozen times or so, I'm not sure that I can tell you what it was that initially held me back. Good books - the best of cookery books - are like that, not so much page-turners, but made up of the the kind of pages you end up lingering over, remembering as you're driving along listening to all the economic doom and gloom on the radio, that come to you in the middle of the night, that remind what it is that you enjoy so very much about food writing.

Actually, apart from the lovely cover image, I think it was that the book is illustrated with images not, for the most part, of food that made me slower to take it all in, but of old family photographs, a family I did not (yet) know. Having read the book cover to cover now, I feel I know Yazbek's people a little better - and the pictures, now, are wonderful.

the modestly-titled Eggplant Bake

Let's talk about the food first: recipes couldn't be explained more simply, and yet, like many of my favourite cooks, they deliver in spades because they are cleverly spiced, carefully constructed, and none too difficult for a busy home cook to prepare. Better yet is that this is food that is budget-friendly, and the ingredients are, like a lot of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/African/Good Vegetarian recipes, generally inexpensive and, for the most part, easy to find. Mind you, I had a stupidly difficult time finding burghul this weekend in Kyneton, but I'll stock up in the city this week 'cos I want to cook and eat everything she does.

Yazbek uses loads of vegetables. I mean, just look at everything that went into that dish above:

(and again!)

Brilliant.
 
Dishes are inventive, the flavours just my kind. She kicks things off with the unfortunately-titled Sweated Vegetable Mix (6 carrots, an onion and 6 celery sticks, all grated and sweated for up to 45 minutes over the lowest heat possible in a heavy, lidded pan with 2 bay leaves, 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a little salt) and turns the mixture - something you can, indeed should, freeze in 2 cup amounts for later use - into 8 very different, quick meals. The Oat Patties, oven-baked (vegan now I come to think about it) were served on a thick gingery, garlicky tomato sauce of my own making. Astoundingly good, made from simple ingredients in the pantry.

Ingenious, delectable stuff for mid-week.

Kibbe of Potatoes

This weekend the two of us enjoyed her Kibbe of Potatoes (vegan, again), filled with a mixture of onions and currants and walnuts over three meals, and it just got better each day. It needs a juicy, crunchy, salty salad to go with it to my mind, something to offset the sweetness of the cinnamon in the kibbe dough, and I will be making the pumpkin version come autumn. 

Generous, this is a book that is inclusive to all styles of vegetable-friendly eating; vegans, gleegans and the ovo-lacto-vegetarian will all find solace within this collection. Chapters cover, among other things, tofu (lots of gorgeous tofu in here), cooking from the garden (close to my own heart, and packed full of eggplant and okra recipes!), celebratory food, everyday food and, of course, the food of South Africa via Lebanon. She, like Kathryn, puts dessert in context, and I love them both for that!   

Then there's Yazbek's writing voice. The book is part manual, part memoir and manages to be modest, poetic, wise, compassionate, funny (very) and warm. It's a cookbook with soul, one to read for more than recipes alone. This, from Food for the Road, I love:

Solitary driving and stopping at will for a view, or to write something that silence has dislodged, is as gratifying as arriving in the arms of loving friends - the moment when the city and all cares of home have fallen away. Enfolded in green hills, close to a blue and white sea, I become friend to myself once more.

Look. I could just go on and on about Mezze to Milk Tart (and have, at length, to friends, some of whom think I've gone mad), but I think it's best that you try and track down a copy for yourself. It is thoughtful, full of food that wends its way through some of the most interesting parts of the world, and is both fresh and inventive.

Highly recommended.