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You too can take photographs like this and join the blogging revolution

December 31, 2012 in dessert, ramblings | 4 comments

Since I know people who take photos for money and stuff, I’m a bit reluctant to be HERE’S HOW IT’S DONE BITCHEZ! but since I’m very experienced at not knowing what I’m talking about and a few desperate lucky ducks got cameras for christmas and had to resort to me as some kind of authority, here is my explanation I can point to.

Actually before I do, a couple of disclaimers. Firstly, I realise this may qualify as a ‘here you are’ shot and to deflect any criticism, it was shot live so it is in fact ‘un moment decisif’. As an experienced adult educator, I feel the need to come across as incredibly patronising. OK we’re good.

If you’re Ansell Adams and you’re at Yosemite Park and you see a nice cliff, you may want to see everything. When you take photographs of food there are bits you want to see like a prawn; and bits you don’t want to see so much like boring lettuce, or a wall; or you want to hint at like a contextual saucepan, the bottle of wine you’re incidentally having, or the KitchenAid you’re a bit embarrassed about but still want everyone to know you’re got.

So you can signify this hierarchy of importance in you photo by using focus. The things which are important are in focus and the ones that aren’t so important are out of focus. How much is in or out of focus is called depth of field. The above photo has a shallow depth of field - you’ll see the spoon, index finger, and narrow line of almonds are in focus. Watch, wineglass, elbow, etc are out of focus. This picture would therefore be for Spoon Monthly or Pudding Almanac rather than Elbow!

So, how can you get this shallow depth of field thing?
First you’ll need to change your camera to aperture mode. This is usually indicated by an A.
Then you’ll need to understand aperture. Aperture is how much light is let in by the camera. A large aperture lets in lots of light and a small aperture lets in a little bit of light. Aperture is represented by an f-stop e.g. f/2.8

Here is the mind bending bit: small numbers mean a large aperture and big numbers mean a small aperture. f/2.8 large aperture. f/22 small aperture.

In an olden days camera you’d adjust the aperture to get the photo exposure right. Bright and sunny – less light in; bit dark – more light in. A by-product of this is that aperture also affects focus. A pinhole camera will be in focus from the pinhole to infinity and then as the aperture increases from the size of a pinhole, you have increasingly less depth of field.

Lets recap: A larger aperture, represented by a smaller f-stop, will let more light in and also give you a shallow depth of field which will mean less of the picture is in focus such as in the above photo.

Other things:

Shutter Speed
In low light situations you increase the aperture so shallow depth of field is a great double bonus for food shots, which are often indoors. Eventually you’re going to get to the other side of the light trade off – as the light decreases your shutter (opening) speed has to decrease to allow more time for light to get in. 1/60 of a second is usually seen as the point to stop for good hand held shots and the 1/30 second and below for resting your hands or something or a few hand-steadying pints.

Film Speed
I love you digital film speed. In the olden days you could get slow film, which was beautifully detailed and enlargeable but needed lots of light. If you were shooting say, Herman’s Hermits at an indoor ‘gig’, you’d use a fast film, which needed less light but looked ‘grainier’ when enlarged. To do both you’d have to swap film or have two cameras.
With digital cameras you can just find the ISO setting/button and increase the ISO until you get the exposure right. ISO 200 is the standard slow and ISO 1600 is fast.
The trade off is there’s more noise and grain but if you’ve got a good new camera or a digital SLR, the pictures are large enough to not worry about grain too much. If you do want to take the perfect shot that’ll be 6 feet high in MOMA, you’re not going to do it with a flash on top of your camera anyway, so use ISO.

Focus
Do I need to tell you you need to have the right thing in focus? No. But if you’re not aware that your camera has a grid of focus sensors and you can choose which one to use, then you are now. There are other ways but journey of self discovery begins now.

To summarise: Depth of field can be used to emphasise parts of a photo and this can be exploited by using your aperture setting.

Boring

November 28, 2012 in ramblings | 3 comments

Here let me set up a premise where someone does X and I think it should be Y and pretend to be all sciency about it to pad it out to meet word length on a piece about onions.

Hermeneutically Sealed Moroccan Lemons

September 23, 2009 in basics, middle eastern, ramblings | 4 comments

it’s lemons, it’s a pufferfish, it’s hitler’s head

I was a bit sad to find that the Flannery O’Connor facebook fan site’s nicely quoted punchline (“Joyce who?”) from her short story The Enduring Chill had been spoiled by a few holy joes trying to find the tale of redemption in it all – stamping on the funny in the process. You can only be lectured so long by a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, who believes that death, offering the hope of resurrection, is no bad thing and was once a paramedic. It’s not surprising, comedy and organised religion have never been equal partners. They fight over the same epistemological turf [sex, death, walking into bars] and in the end humour needs serious people more than serious people need humour. Eco covered this well in Name of the Rose, with the heretical book [spoiler alert] being a book of gags by Aristotle. While the book was about a deductive proto-Holmes unravelling superstition, there was enough slack in the mystery to force the reader into interpretation and interpretation based on context. As he says in KANT and the Platypus

I would not say we can have any real knowledge; if anything, I would maintain that we have an excess of real knowledge. Some are prepared to object that there is no difference between saying there is no truth and saying there are many truths. But we might likewise object that this excess of truth is transitory; it is an effect of our groping our way along , between trial and error; it indicates a limit beyond which these different perspectives (all partly true) could one day be combined in a [jar].

The relatively simple tale of preserving lemons in salt in a jar suffers from an excess of knowledge on the internets and is widely open for interpretation by both readers and writers on the internets. There are at least three different cutting techniques, at least one glaring omission of a hygiene step and differing values placed on perceived taste over cretinism.

This is what I can tell you:

- obtain lemons from your tree or a neighbourhood tree. Don’t buy them, I thinks it better if you just face up to your lack of social connections and your eventual stabbing – Kitty Genovese style – to indifferent neighbours

- don’t bother being too choosy, the ugly ones can be put to good use later.

- give the lemons a scrub and then lop the last few eights of an inch off the ends of the lemons.

- the lemon is then cut into quartered claw; an x made at one end that continues through to all but the last centimetre. The lemon is then stuffed with a tablespoon or so of salt and the salt gets to work on the freshly exposed lemon innards.

- somewhere it’s argued that commercial salt has a metallic taste and that their many mattresses have a pea underneath. Elsewhere it’s said that the added iodine is no bad thing when compared to the goitered life of a Catskills cretin. I used sea salt, if only for the reason that the coarse size allows for a good fill of the lemon, where a finer salt would smother.

- sterilise your jar. Food safety is something you don’t want too much vagary for. In the fridge or a cool dark space? I’m assuming there was a time of preserved lemons before the refrigerator and went for a cool dark space

- in the pantry, behind the booze. One suggestion I followed, and didn’t see elsewhere, was to top the jar up with a sealing layer of a 1/4 cup of olive oil. It seems sound advice.

- most of the action happens over three days. The lemons release their juices and soften. This means that extra lemons can be added to get a nice snug fit and you will need to fill with extra lemon juice to cover the lemons (from the uglies)

- cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, coriander seeds, cloves and peppercorns can all be added in their twos or threes or tablespoon or so.

- from here you’ve got about a month long wait. I’m planning on holding out until christmas, when it’ll be distributed up into gifts and hopefully put to good use. I’m freshening up tagines with mine and they also make for a lovely citric seafood pasta sauce.

**********
And this post is my yellow contribution to LiveSTRONG With A Taste Of Yellow 2009 – once again organised by the inestimable Barbara of winosandfoodies. The events is part of the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s efforts to raise cancer issues worldwide. I’d be surprised if you haven’t got your own experiences. Even in my own fortunate life I’ve got a grandfather I never met, a friend who scared the shit out of us last year, and a colleague who’s on the mend. Keep an eye out for the round-up on the 3rd of October.

UPDATE: it’s up and it’s awesome.

Tags: lemons, LiveSTRONG With A Taste Of Yellow, preserves

Keith Floyd, actually dead.

September 17, 2009 in ramblings | No comments

teeth will be provided

I was a tad premature before.

And it’s a very sad thing but really, on a happier note, I can’t see in the league of reasonable expectations how he could have packed more into his life.

Not so Jay Rayner of the Guardian who, as if Floyd had donated himself to a medical school, manages to get a few salutory lessons out of his corpse.

And now he’s gone. In truth of course he went a while back, a victim of his own capricious appetites. But at least as he was taking his leave his importance and brilliance had finally been recognised.

If only the bad boozing Floyd could have been removed like a cojoined twin with unshared vital organs, he may well have been presenting into the 21st century, seen financial success as owner of the British franchise of Kenny Roger’s Roasters, and eventually died at the ripe old age of 108 surrounded by his 43 grandchildren and great grandchildren. It’s a story I will tell my child to and may even sneak in a deathbed confession to a priest to nail home the dangers of drink.

Did you know Floyd set the coordinates on TV for Reality TV by being realistic? Jay does. Did you know a “subdued” [read sober] Floyd saved Jay’s dinner party? Now you do.

As I was coincidentally reading today from Kay Steiger.

Hesse is like other unimaginative journalists. She cannot possibly comprehend that what’s going on in her own personal life isn’t interesting to the rest of the world.

Now I suppose you’re wondering what chefs had to say?

*****************

coda update:

Floyd was prone to depression and grumbled incessantly about the burden of fame. Inebriated barristers were forever waking him up on trains, he complained, with dull questions about how to cook geese.

Anyway a cock walks into a bar and says “I’ll have a pint of heavy” and the barman says “Sorry we don’t serve genitalia here but I hear there’s a job going for a food writer at the Guardian.”

You’re never alone with a charcoal burner

July 26, 2009 in drinks, ramblings | 2 comments

I popped into 399 yesterday, while Toni was having emergency dentistry from an aggressive piece of walnut bread. I’d heard nothing but good things and wanted to try their mulled wine for a Tiger Tiger comparo and it was very good.

The interesting thing though was the bartender was laboriously making an Old Fashioned. So given they haven’t been done properly for ages, would this make it an old fashioned Old Fashioned? And if they updated it in a decade’s time, would it be a newly fashioned old fashioned Old Fashioned? Also, if Ray Davies died around that time and they made a tribute drink, would it be a newly fashioned old fashioned Old Fashioned follower of fashion?

A story that goes nowhere

July 15, 2009 in ramblings | No comments

Back when, I found an apple so I wents to my my mom and said “hey mom, I’s got an apple.”
And so she says, “apples are for hogs and you ain’t no hog.”
“That’s true,” I says. “But I ain’t no hog and if I eats it, then it ain’t so that apples are for hogs.”

The End

Two Sentence Cultural History Reduction – A New Year’s Eve Party

July 6, 2009 in ramblings | 2 comments

I think this meal would take approximately one hour and a half to two hours to serve and eat, allowing for conversation.
While the hostess tidies the dining-room and kitchen the guests will have time to collect their coats and prepare to leave for the dance at approximately 9.30 pm

Mrs Roseann Johnston The Australian Hostess Cookbook (1969)

The Gurniad gaurds the Gurdian

March 23, 2009 in ramblings | 6 comments

As the first forkful of scampi sidled gingerly into his mouth, my friend’s head snapped still in surprise, then began to oscillate gently in ecstatic bemusement. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “I didn’t give the place a chance. When the waitress said, ‘Is there anywhere you’d like to sit?’ I wanted to say Melbourne. Or Belmarsh. Anywhere but here. This is bizarre.”

Firstly, forkfuls of scampi don’t sidle any more than turds flush; angrily or no.

Secondly, what’s wrong with his friend’s head?

Thirdly, ‘ecstatic bemusement’?; was ‘hysterical contemplation’ busy that week?

Fourthly, friends don’t let friends become esprit d’escalier proxies.

Fifthly, an unexpectedly good restaurant is a ‘nice surprise’. Bizarre is a Fortean stick mag for gothy youth.

It wanks on and on (with erratic repetitiveness) and the world of dining, and indeed the entire world, is a worse place for it. I’ll now sigh in a disappointed fashion.

President Obama Celebration Dinner

November 15, 2008 in dessert, dinners, festivities, french, italian, ramblings | No comments

Sincere congratulations to America. Coinciding with the feeling of having an old friend back, I had an actual old friend over for dinner, last week* The main course was a deeply symbolic with the zucchini, freshly flowering, representing birth and growth; the pancetta a tribute to that distinctly Chicagoan measure of value – the pork belly; and in turn the use of pork and shellfish as a triumph over religious constriction; and the linguine as a well-wishing metaphor for long life. I would have had I not simply decided to make this at the suggestion of an Italian chef and student during a particularly quiet and hungry moment.

Broad Beans with Cacciatore
Take the beans out of the pod and boil them in salted water for a minute. Drain and cool under running water. No need for second shelling.
Poach a pork and fennel cacciatore sausage in dry sherry and then slice thinly. Brown a little in olive oil in a pan and then add the broad beans. Stir well until the beans are heated through and the sausage is golden [hello Mark Faga] sausage IS GOLDEN![/hello Mark Faga]. Season and serve.

Zucchini Prawn and Pancetta Linguine
Dice a zucchini very finely and then finely grate a couple of tablespoons extra. This will spread itself more widely over the pasta. Cube cigarette packet sized block of pancetta. Chop up about 300 g of prawn meat and leave a few whole tails for garnish.
Heat a generous combination of clarified butter and EVOO. Add the pancetta and cook until lightly browned. Add the prawn meat, toss and then add the zucchini until it’s all cooked through.
Season and serve with linguini. Mix most through and then garnish the top of the pasta with with the remainder and place a prawn tail on top.

The zucchini was provided from the garden of the photographer who does all our wine shots for the mag (his site’s here). He’s also got one of these, which is pretty cool. They were supplemented by a few baby zucchini from my garden – they still have a way to go.

Tarte Fine aux Pommes
It’s my lazy favourite.
If prepping ahead, thinly slice apples and then mix in the juice of a lemon and some sugar to keep them going brown.
Roll out a sheet of sweet and cover with the apple slices.
Mix an equal combo of butter, sugar, and calvados and heat without burning.Pour over the apples.
It is, after all simply an apple pizza.
Cook in a very hot oven.

*[The parallels kind of stop there as I don't think my friend mounted a deceptive hostile invasion of a nation resulting in millions dead, displaced, or wounded; tried to bring torture back; validated gross levels of stupidity and anti-intellectualism; stuffed up an economy; behaved like an ass over international treaty efforts; or did stuff all while people drowned. And its part America didn't start going out with a really nice guy who used to be in cover bands]

Keith Floyd – not at all dead

July 17, 2008 in dessert, french, old school, ramblings, seafood | 15 comments

Keith Floyd – he’s alive! ALIVE!! Sure we were curious as to what happened to that large boulder and were dead impressed when he offered us to pop our fingers in the wounds all the while casually emptying a couple of bottles of Pouilly Fume but really we were just happy to have him back. What we really liked about him (apart from being the only person apart from Mark Oliver Everett that can wear a bowtie and not look like a berk) was his humanity. A weakness for booze, rubbish at finances, and a deep and sincere need to be loved. He also had the improbably rock star name shared with greats such as Keith Richards, Keith Moon and Keith Urban.

So the Keith Floyd tribute dinner of Smoked Trout and Cucumber Souffle with Rice Pudding based on second-hand Cornish scuttlebutt was not so much a time for mourning but celebrating. He had, much more so than my souffle, risen. While the miracle of birth is one thing; forgetting what it was like being a kid and being genuinely surprised when you actually woke up is another; it’s to have, to lose and to get back that’s the real trick.

Here’s his Real Rice Pudding recipe – it’s simple so don’t skimp on the vanilla pod, the milk or the cream. It’s an unseemly luxury for its simplicity.

3tbs short-grain rice; 600ml full cream milk; 1 vanilla pod; 25gm caster sugar; 150ml of double cream – whipped until softly peaky

Bring all the ingredients, except for the cream, to the boil and then put in an ovenproof dish with a lid and cook at 150˚C for 2 hours. Remove the pod, allow to cool slightly and then fold in the cream.

UPDATE

Tags: souffle, trout

not-Spanokopita

March 10, 2008 in pies, ramblings | 13 comments

A lot of people have been asking me what I did with that tin of tin of Bulgarian not-feta that I bought a while back. Well the answer is nothing, but then I used some to make leftover sausage scrambled eggs (slice the sausage thinly, fry up in a bit of harissa and pretend it’s chorizo) with not-feta. It’s not-feta because it’s Bulgarian white brined cheese. I’d assumed this was part of the Protected Designation of Origin Laws but the hot gossip is that feta was originally made in Trakia, Bulagaria and they call it sirene. I can’t pretend to know how pissed off Greeks would be about this but according to this post at Balkanalysis.com suggests they’ve had an initially antagonistic start to their relationship in the 7th Century; a brief period of amity; complications when Greece discovered that Bulgaria was only going out with it because of a bet with Romania; and then finally “strong relations.”
Read it all because it has the best bitchy caption about a British PM ever:

In 1912, British fixer J.D. Bourchier was honored with a Bulgarian postage stamp; today, Tony Blair warrants only a babushka in Sofia’s flea market.

It’s a shame Crass aren’t still around to write “How does it feel (to be not half the man J.D. Bourchier was)”

My own Bulgarian- Greek nexus occurred in 1989 (stop me if you’ve heard thins one before) when I visited Sofia. Fresh from eating my body weight in dishes with paprika cream sauce, politely drinking pepsi and red wine, and dodging tram fares in Budapest, I should have realised something was up when I became the only person with a backpack on the train. When I got off the train at Sofia station, someone made it their business to walk over to me and call me a “tourist” much like you’d call someone a variation of twat. I went there to catch up with the last known link with my family. I’m pretty sure the last visit to Bulgaria have been in the 1920′s by my grandfather. The evidence being a black and white photo of a somber group of locals who may have been at a funeral, or a wedding; hard to tell.

The address was 234-64 something something Sofia and 64 referred one of the randomly placed Stalin-style apartment blocks around town. I wasn’t deterred and had spent no small amount of time thinking about what it would be like to be welcomed back by my ancestors; the great-grandson of my great-grandfather who eloped with his fiance eighty years or so earlier. A kind soul, who spoke a little English and a bit of Russian and a bit of French and smoked Malborough Reds, found the apartment block for me and wished me well. I found the door and knocked. And knocked. And knocked. And then a neighbour came out, I said the person’s name and then the neighbour made a driving gesture and indicated that she wouldn’t be back for a few days.

In mandatory hotel room fees (with roof views) and compulsory currency exchange, Bulgaria was too rich for me and I decided to leave the next day. No pigs slaughtered; no young women giggling demurely while they worked how distant a relation, I really was if at all; and no lashings of yoghurt. I hung out in a bar in Sofia, actually it was more like a cafeteria selling beer, and the night life was surprisingly not good. The next day was shops are closed day except for the shops that didn’t seem to sell anything except skis so bought my ticket to Athens for the equivalent of three dollars.

I shared a compartment with some holidaying Poles who gave me food and then when the ticket inspector arrived I found out, as everyone pulled out large bits of paper to my small stub, that the ticket was remarkably cheap because it wasn’t a ticket but a seat reservation. The conductor thought it was pretty funny at least and rather than being turfed out in chains, I was able to buy a ticket to the Greek border with the money I hadn’t been able to spend with two lev to spare.

A day later I made it to Athens to find the last two thousand years hadn’t been quite as grand as the previous two and that if you go to the Parthenon, don’t look at your watch with a carton of orange juice in your hand, and if you got to visit the Oracle in Delphi, wear a jumper.
Anyway, the recipe is here. I used a bunch of silverbeet and a bunch of spinach (60/40 greens to cheese ratio) and finely diced a zucchini and when you rinse your greens in, make sure you lift them out of whatever you’re rinsing them in rather than pouring them, along with assorted grit, into a strainer. Then wash them again.

Tags: bulgaria, feta, spanakopita

Two deliveries and a sale

February 26, 2008 in festivities, meat, ramblings, roasts | 14 comments

It’s been quite a big fortnight for me and I mean quite big in the same way that a werewolf Sean Connery would be quite hairy (although not on top, which would raise the possibility of a combover werewolf; terrifying yet also funny in a sad kind of way. “You know you’re not fooling anyone…aiiiieeeeeeee”)

Anyway two weeks ago Eva was born and it does not so much turn your life upside down as create its own space in your brain that squashes everything else out of the way. Although not in a way that creates a large bulge in my forehead and the urgent need to take a piss every thirty minutes. She’s also absolutely adorable and makes me laugh, which are great qualities to start life with.

We also managed to get issue 10 of SPICE off to the printers. Well when I say we, I mean everyone else and me distractedly checking commas and apostrophes and asking if it’d kill us if we got it out on the 7th instead of the 1st.

The other thing was the family farm’s clearing sale, last Friday. A clearing sale is a kind of garage sale but with heavy machinery and drinks afterwards. It also means that the family farm is sold and so ends my father’s forty years on a wheat and sheep farm and my family’s 80 year ownership of the wheatbelt property.I grew up there and it was as a good a childhood as anyone could want – I was rarely priveleged. By my teens, the appeal had waned; it became holiday farm work through uni; and by my twenties I’d supplanted my home town of twenty with the 14 million person megalopolis of Tokyo. Although things changed on the farm there was always something I could relate that linked to some part of my life. On the day, most of theses things were lain out in straight lines in the paddock and all that was left in the workshop were the neatly painted labels of where the tools once went.

It was a hot day, the wind blew with dust all day, my first car struggled to raise $50, and I’ve never enjoyed a can(s) of mid-strength beer so much. The sale went well beyond all expectations, I only got one ‘why didn’t you take over the farm’ question, and a lot of people weren’t shy in saying how they’d miss my Dad.

I took two things with me; the Cramphorne wool bale stencils and a leg of lamb from the freezer. This was from one of the sheep on the farm and, as they aren’t there anymore, it’s the last of the lamb. I roasted it old-style with garlic and rosemary stuffed into slits in the meat and we had our Sunday roast together. Eva didn’t quite make it up to the farm and she’s a few months away from solids but whatever Toni eats, she gets eventually. And so in an odd, indirect way, the farm became part of her.

Tags: farm, lamb

Assorted things to show and tell

July 21, 2007 in drinks, music, ramblings, SPICE magazine | 16 comments

I’ve been meaning to show off my highly desirable damascan steel Shun cleaver. It’s been a torrid three month’s and I don’t want to kiss and tell but lets just say “cabbage” “all night long” of you know what I mean and I think you do. It’s a sharp metal testament to the fruits of blogging thanks to the Kitchen Warehouse ad rightwards (thank you clickers).

If any of you have been wondering what Spice magazine is actually like apart from my rambly blurbs and can’t get access to a paper copy, you can have a butchers at some sample pages here.

I was at a vertizontal tasting today (2004! 2007!) and was asked in front of a group of twenty people what I thought of a 2001 shiraz. It was a year 10 algebra what do you think x is Georgeff? moment. I think I’ve got a repertoire of 1.4 intelligent things I can say about a given wine before bouncing the question on. I’m actually pretty happy with this amount, winemaking is an enormously complex process and 1.4 is about what I deserve. The more I learn the more respect I have. That said, I was reading about a South Australian winery that named their wines after rock albums. It’s a swell idea with lots of potential – Paranoid Pinot Gris, Master of Puppets Mourvedre, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back Sem Sav and the 2003 1984.
They chose Joshua Tree.
God weeps.
Some say Gram Parsons died at Joshua Tree, I say it killed him.

Tags: knife

I just watched Chocolat

June 4, 2007 in music, ramblings | 5 comments

but actually preferred this. And it’s in a church, natch! I’m not sure if Josh Homme is taught to shake off his repressed feeling through the power of food by a mysterious woman or gets eaten. Given the “split pea and hand” soup in the Conan DVD I bought, strong chance of synchronicity suggests the latter. The Police are back together, is that good or bad? Either it’s a three act resolution with the second act crisis being the entire solo career of Sting; or it’s an endlessly recurring cycle.

[Yeah I know youtube is pretty slack but I'm a bit overwhelmed by having two meals in four days which comprised of 16 courses in total]

Oh yeah, I made a beef stock you can bounce a coin off.

The sad state of lard packaging today

December 10, 2006 in ramblings | 20 comments

- Raymond Loewy gently weeps. Its not so much economy as despair at the potential.

- Gracianne pays me a very large compliment at Un dimanche a la campagne by doing my lard based lemon meringue pie in French.

- You’ll get your money’s worth in the opening credits of Casino Royale, rest is gravy. Sad to see the optimism of the 60′s with lasers has been replaced by the naked man and a chair of the current zeitgeist.

- Lingot d Argental from Lyon is as gentle and creamy a soft cheese as you could want. They’ve got some at Herdies.

- You, Me and Dupree is the best French comedy of 2006.

- I’m a complete bum. Pim nicely asked me to join Menu for Hope III and I’ve done nothing. Keep a sharp eye on it, it aims to raise a motza for the United Nation’s World Food Program and you can help.

- Van Halen’s Jump sounds surprisingly fresh thanks to a very dirty bit of background fuzz on the synth. 1984 is the only concept album to last one song. Rather than apollonian/dyonysian as the two dichotomies of our culture, I think we could learn a lot from Lee Rothian/Hagarian divisions. I think the Age of Hagar of the past six years is one the wane and welcome the waxing of Lee Roth (not literally, hairiness is part of his charm).

- hirsute means hairy, who knew?

Tags: lard

Finished

November 21, 2006 in ramblings, SPICE magazine | 12 comments

Hooray the mag is off to the gestetners. Which leaves me to indulge in my three favourite things – beer, country music, and trowelling.

And I’ve a hankering to make a lemon-meringue pie so maybe I might actually put some food up here.

5 things to eat before you die

October 31, 2006 in ramblings | 24 comments

I’ve had a burst of guilt. Chubby Hubby had tagged me for my first meme for a while two months ago and I never got around to posting it – Five things to eat before you die.

1. Something you’ve killed
I think everybody should eat something they’ve killed and it should be as far up the animal food chain as possible. Yes, yes you should. Can’t go passing the buck all your life. Not that I’m buying into this whole great white hunter bollocks. I’m obviously suspicious of people that surround themselves with every modern comfort and their way of reaching back to their ancient past just happens to be shooting something. There’s a time and a place but any more significance placed on hunting than ‘killin’ stuff’ is bollocks. And yeah alright it’s not very practical so check with your local council and try not to stuff it up, actually don’t bother it’s just too hard.
I dunno, buy a live lobster, kill it properly (they’re fiesty if they wake up!), and pat yourself on the back. Or go vegetarian.

2. Uni
Not the place where I sent five yeards faffing around doing a Philosophy and Accounting double degree but the gonads of sea urchins. It’s like a turd wrapped in a hand grenade. So why have it? Well it’s gorgeous, it’s like dessert for savoury people, a sweet salty buttery aromatic mousse made from the creamiest of cream. It’s sweet like a really good champagne is, that’s not really sweet at all. But why not just make a sweet salty aromatic mousse from the creamiest cream? Because you don’t have to, because it just is as it is, untouched. And it’s something you really shouldn’t have in any rational world but you try it and it’s good, geniunely good. You can’t say that about sea cucumbers

3. A suitably effective hallucinogenic
Not suggesting for a minute that you go out and buy these or even enjoy them in a nice pastoral setting on a sunny day but, while not the most tasty of eating experiences, they do give more ride for your dollar than any other ingestible I can think of.
What it will teach you about food is the effect that small amounts of chemicals can have on your body. Compare this with the large amounts of beer required to get up to the level of “dancing” and the tardy side-effects of eating crap food, you can almost see the genesis of the organic food movement.
Other than that, there’s little better for appreciating how tenuous our strongly held beliefs can be – my! carpet *can* undulate after all, and what a sharp little knife edge of perception and reason we live on. It’ll also teach you that if things do get bad, they will pass with patience, that acceptance can trump struggle, and fear is illusory – very Tao.
Otherwise: play dizzy whizzy and fall backwards and look at the clouds.

4. Spam and Noodle Casserole
God help me the world of food is a relativist one. It’s all bloody well we’re busy, or we can’t afford this, or but I liiiike it, or ooooh what a fucking food snob. It’s getting so hard you can’t even pop into the Scottish Restaurant on a Saturday morning and shout you must hate your children if you’re giving them this shit anymore without someone feeling all aggrieved. Thank you Spam and Noodle Casserole because you have taught me that there are absolutes and there is evil.

5. A Giant Bouncy Castle Made of Jelly
I don’t know if this is feasible but the thought of dying and not having eaten this just breaks my heart.

Clear Mackeral Soup, Golden Snapper with Artichoke Barigoule and Motor Reviews

October 4, 2006 in basics, dinners, french, japanese, ramblings, seafood, vegetables | 5 comments

My significant other-in-law Chris runs a charter fishing boat out of Darwin. He has five top fish and not only refuses to keep any fish outside of the five for himself, but refuses to give them away either. Picky to be sure, but it meant we got five bags of immaculatey packed and filleted pieces of Darwin’s finest when my sister in law came to stay.

Mackeral in a Clear Soup
Mackeral is a strong tasting fish so the idea was to place it in a milder context of the mild fishiness of dashi stock. The dashi has mirin added to it for a bit of sweetness and soy sauce to fill in the gaps with a bit of meaty saltiness. The amounts of the latter two need to be tested with tasting. Dashi has a short cooking time so there’s more variance than with a stock that has a longer cooking time and a greater margin of error.
I was also happy to find katsuoboshi in a pack of 50gm bags at the small Asian deli next to Herdies Grower’s fresh. All that seemed to exist before were two kilogram bags, which is quite an amount of of dried bonito shavings. 50gm is also exactly the right amount you need for 1.5 litres of dashi, along with a 6x4cm square of konbu. Konbu is a large sea grass that contains glutamic acid. Glutamic acid is used as a neurotransmitter but also stimulates the umami receptors of our tongue. Umami is the mysterious fifth dimension of taste, which I find personally relevent as Age of Aquarius was the number one single in the year of my birth. It’s also the source of the much maligned MSG.
Traditionally, dashi is made with the water used to rinse rice but untraditionally, I didn’t have rice so normal water had to do.

Dashi
- Add the konbu to 1.5 litres of water and heat over a medium heat. Just before it comes to a boil, remove the konbu from the pot.
- Bring the water to a boil. Add 50gm of katsuoboshi and just as it starts to sink, strain the stock. I’m not sure of the exact degree of sinking and whether it’s as soon a one flke heads downward. Just don’t go wandering off.

Soup
The soup is based on a bamboo and prawn clear soup recipe from Kosaki and Wagner’s The Food of Japan. Theinteresting thing in this is the prawns are dusted with cornflour and quickly cooked in boiling water and then chilled. I’ve no idea what the cornflour does, it’s usually great for coating chicken for frying though. In this case, it did wrap the fish in an interesting texture.

- Add 5 tsp each of mirin and soy sauce for every three cups of dashi.
- Cut the mackeral into manageable pieces and cook as for the prawns above (there aren’t actually any prawns or bamboo in this in case you’re confused, because I replaced it mackeral didn’t I? And try getting fresh bamboo shoots at 6pm on a Sunday night in Perth).
- Add the mackeral pieces to the soup and heat through.
- Distribute the soup and mackeral pieces to the bowls and garnish with sliced chilli, steamed asparagus, and bean shoots that you’ll have spent 15 minuted trying to tie into four neat bundles with a lightly boiled bean shoot stem.

Golden Snapper with Artichoke Barigoule
Yet another Michel Roux Jnr recipe, I’d explain it in detail but I really think you should just go out and buy Le Gavroche Cookbook and get the Food of Japan while you’re at it. Artichoke barigoule is actually quite an old French dish. This one is best described as a mirepoix of roughly equal amounts of fennel bulb, onion, carrot, and diced and browned parma ham cooked in olive oil with thyme and garlic with two peeled artichokes in sixths added and then simmered covered with greaseproof paper with a glass of white wine, 60ml of warm water, and the juice of half a lemon for 15 minutes. Think of it as a nascent stock.
The fish is cooked in a very hot ovenproof pan in a very hot oven with olive oil, rosemary and thyme.
Serve on mash with the barigoule, garnish with freshly shredded basil leaves, a splash of olive oil and some of the barigoule juices.

Very nice. The snapper is fantastic and the only thing that can be “done” to it is stuffing it up, but a careful eye should prevent that. I liked the barigoule too, the finely diced pieces blended together without any particular one being dominant with the citric aspects of the wine and lemon juice matching the fish.

Bonus Motor Reviews:
‘00 V6 Holden Commodore Executive
If you’re an executive that makes his or her own cup of coffee and brown bags their lunch then you’ll appreciate the modest touches like non-electric windows and a cassette player. The steering wheel feels surprisingly like a stress ball, handy for times of refuelling, and connects to competent enough if uncompelling handling. The treasure though, is the engine which throttles the loaf-like sedan at a rudely entertaining pace, which, when couple with underperforming tyres allows for many squeal like a pig moments.

’06 620 Ducati Monster
Traditional no fuss naked home of gentler Ducati engines makes for simple biking pleasures accompanied by a beautiful Termignoni note. Sit up and beg riding position with wide handlebars allows for confident drop in cornering. Slipper clutch avoids traditional Ducati requirement on manly bear grip but does make for uncertain starts. Lower power requires more judicious gear selection than with larger torquier twins. Apparently the front shocks can’t be adjusted , so firmer springs and a bikini screen a good accessory choice.

’06 Volvo XC90 D5
Smooth spinning and with a creamily compelling engine howl, it handles as effortlessly as it does seat five with ample luggage space. Quick, quicker with autotronic, but be soothed by Nordic utilitarian design and soft lights.

Next Week! 240 series redux

Tags: fish, stocks, vehicles

Croquembouche

September 25, 2006 in dessert, french, pastry, ramblings | 23 comments

Back when I was catering in the early nineties, my business partner Nic would always talk about making a croquembouche one day. “It’s gonna be three feet high,” he’d say. “Yeah Nic, it’s going to be three feet high and sparkle like gold,” I’d respond knowing there was no way we’d ever be able to afford to make one with the money we had. But I didn’t want to to crush the dream that kept him going.

After a while it was all he talked about, croquembouche this, croquembouche that and it all got too much and I just had to tell him straight that there was never going to be a croquembouche. I’d never seen him so angry as he pushed past me and ran out the door, grabbing the keys to the limited editon Group A Walkinshaw Camira I’d been working on to try and raise some more money. He was half was down the street before I could get my shoes on. Back then, during the recession and before flexible home equity financing, there was only one way you could get your hands on money quickly – speedway racing.

I must have used all 10 speeds on my bike getting to the track, only to hear the sound of metal. Pushing my way through the pits, I got to Nic just as they were pulling him out of the crushed body of the Camira. “I guess I screwed up pretty badly this time,” Nic whispered, trying not to put pressure on his broken ribs. “No Nick, you did great. Now try to relax.” “It’s gonna be three feet high…” and with a smile Nick said his last words. And in the middle of the track I cried hot tears that day, fifteen years ago – so this one’s for you Nic, we finally made it.

Some notes:
- choux pastry is, funnily enough, like a roux but with egg yolks incorporated.
- crème pâtissière uses milk rather than cream. For this one I flavoured it with passionfruit pulp passed through a sieve to remove the seeds and dark chocolate.
- if the chocolate isn’t melted properly it will block the pastry bag and cream will come out the other end, onto the bench and cookbook and then floor.
- melted sugar is facking hot so wear shoes
- for fine golden threads, put a little of the hot caramel on a puff and pull the spoon back and stretch the thread.
- you don’t need a cone, although it helps
- I’d like to try a savoury one with pate.

Trout and the State of play of the Cash free Economy

September 18, 2006 in dinners, festivities, ramblings, seafood | 17 comments

Four caught trout given to me by a friend on return from a trip down south, wrapped in silicone ties sent to me by a Flickr friend in California in return for sending a song with the same name as her by a Japanese punk band which was downloaded by shareware from somebody with that particular song on their computer somewhere. Eaten with friends who bought beer and wine while we faffed around with a guitar that had been given to me in Japan with a distortion pedal that my brother in law loaned to me when I had birthday breakfast with my Dad who had given me two boning knives previously, one of which I gave to our guests at the end of the evening.

Trout rubbed with ras al hanout and stuffed with almond, date and orange couscous. Served with an orange and fennel salad, and kipfler potatoes with fennel and mustard mayonnaise.

And speaking of good stuff, Chika reviews my ahmmm house さようなら、おうちレストラン. Kind of like Hello! magazine but not naff.

Tags: trout

Port wine and Vanilla Tapioca Pudding

July 15, 2006 in basics, dessert, old school, ramblings | 12 comments

Sinful. Unless it refers to torturing chickens to save a few cents off the price of an egg (and I’m not sure that actually is a sin), it’s a naff word to use in regards to food. And if a supercreamy tapioca pudding is someone’s idea of a ticket to their own circle of hell then we all have much to worry about. Actually I’m sure the high point of my own stygian repose would be being able to listen to wails of “But Lord, it was but one Milky Bar!” as they reached up to a particularly smug group of lactose intolerants. The circles of dairy hell are:

low-fat milk
havarti cheese
cafe latte
prurient thoughts regarding milkmaids
milk
chocolate
600ml choc-milk
whipping cream
chocolate mousse
double cream
double brie
triple brie
mascarpone
Nestle Infant Formula

Anyway tapioca, in the hunt for a recipe sometimes you think it’d been invented by ‘Grandma’ who had a prediliction for jello and cool whip (They still talk about it in Normandy). The others involve eggs and I don’t remember tapioca involving eggs. Well there’s a recipe here, that’s merged it with zabaglione,hence the marsala, and that made sense. I also learnt what ‘half and half’ is when it’s not half lager, half ale. I substituted vanilla and port for the marsala

- soak 1/3 cup baby tapioca pearls for two hours, drain
- add to 2.5 cups of half cream and half milk and bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Stirring often with a whisk (or constantly if you can be bothered and you’ve got a heater and a telly in the kitchen)
- add 1 tsp vanilla essence and a shot of port. Simmer for another 20 minutes.
- whisk one egg and one egg yolk with 4 tbs of sugar until combined and light in colour.
- add 1/3 of the tapioca mix to the eggs, stirring constantly.
- return to the saucean and over a low heat, stir constantly for five minutes.
- pop in a glass and top with berries and whipped cream.

Sadly you can’t see the multi-coloured eyes of tapioca gazing out and the $1.50 ikea glass looks like a $1.50 ikea glass (and I didn’t iron the placemat) but it was independently assessed as ‘the yummiest tapioca ever…creamy and dreamy’ . So there you go.

Bonus pic is the Kylie Kwong steamed oysters that I had in a not very successful thai dinner. They tasted nowhere near as nice as they looked – largely due to a poor decision between Malaysian cooking wine and a four day old of bottle verdelho (it was fine on Tuesday before POTC). I chose the latter and as a further blow, the oysters weren’t steamed enough to be hot, but rather not quite cold.

Tags: dairy, oyster

Theme from Man That Cooks

May 27, 2006 in music, ramblings | 10 comments

How many blogs have a theme tune, hey? Made this yonks ago on garage band and it’s been sitting gathering dust on my lappy. Mercifully free of vocals or any actual playing of music. Although look out for “Spiceblog! – The Iron Man Variations.”

Or you just go and enjoy this via The Poor Man.

NEWS JUST IN! – filed by Crafty

Best Restaurants Survey

May 20, 2006 in ramblings | 5 comments

His pistol melted, Yamanaka tai-i had no choice but ancestral weaponry to defeat the iron beast

Is there a more stunning opening to a TV program, or a movie for that matter, than the 6 Million Dollar Man with its montage of different formats – the flashing lights of computers, the rotating precursor to autocad, the overlaid radar, the voiceover, the radio voice, the cut to the grainy footage of the crash, the string heavy music accompanied by a winding up to speed turbo following a soundtrack of beeps and ventilator wheezes. It also surprised me what an ambiguous character he was, obviously half-man half-machine, but also on the earth but yearning to be back on the moon, desirable to women yet with the unresolved question of how much he was damaged – if you know what I mean, a civillian yet under the control of the military, a man but defined only in terms of coin, a reluctant killer, and with powers that are simultaneously a curse. Smile at the jump-suits, chill at the anxieties of ’70′s modernity.

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that immaculate Singaporean food blogger, Chubby Hubby is assembling a list of the objectively and (a nice touch) subjectively best Asia-Pacific restaurants and needs your help doing so. Have a good loook here – Asia Pacific Best Restaurants List

Tags: Steve Austin

Guest Post

May 12, 2006 in ramblings | 2 comments

It’s Friday, I’ve got three days to get a mag to the printers, finally nail the ending for an article on a butcher (for the love of god give me a simile!), and just I’ve realised I’m dressed like Shakin’ Stevens. Activate group blog team nippon!

Irrashai! I’m the seaweed broth sample lady. I’m here to offer you a sample of seaweed broth while there aren’t any postings. Oops here comes my supervisor.

I am a wrestler who grapples with things. These savoury snack sticks represent the burden I am carrying on behalf of Anthony. Am I being a bit obvious?

Tags: japan

Freshness Burger Redux

April 30, 2006 in ramblings, travels | 9 comments

As someone who finds most delight in Little Britain in the Dennis Waterman sketch and my most vivid childhood dreams being ones where perspective expanded and contracted regardless of retreat or advance, I felt at home with my tray at Freshness Burger on my last day in Tokyo. It would be quite a diet. Wired and hungry.

Pierre Herme – Tokyo

April 20, 2006 in ramblings, travels | 13 comments

when life gives you lemons and unnaturally good pastry skills

As I’m not likely to be heading to Paris any time soon, Tokyo would be as convenient a place as any to try the wares of the highly rated Pierre Herme. Pierre Herme is a pastry chef that brings delight to more discerning women than any other, additionally and not entirely unrelated he is also the patron saint of large hairy men who hope to attract the avid attentions of large numbers of women. The shop is in Aoyama, by coincidence, a five minute walk from where I was handily going to pick up a wad of cash. Off I went, found it, and waited 20 minutes out the front anxiously trying not look like somebody waiting for the pub to open so they could have their first pony of sherry for the day (see also clinic, methadone).

I’m not sure what I was expecting, given the praise heaped upon his macaroons I would have been disappointed with anything less than the sensation of a thousand angels brushing their sugar dusted nipples across my tongue in ecstatic unison. Discretely, for such a moment, I was fortunate enough, in lieu of a booth, to have the second floor cafe all to myself. One small potentially embarrassing situation was with the menu with a set containing three items and I wasn’t sure whether I just ordered the set and got all three and looked like a glutton or asked for one and seemed unusually parsimonious. I settled for saying signature set and them mumbling mousse with an airy hand wave that could suggest etcetera if need be.

First to present itself was a small spongy treat accompanying my espresso. Me and the waitress managed to communicate that it was fig and that was the filling with cinnamon of a raspberry sponge thing. The sponge thing actually had the same texture of an extremely fresh licorice allsort and was much enjoyed for it.

The signature set arrived and it was three glasses which could be described as three ways of making desserty chocolate and then putting something on top. The first was coconut milk, tapioca, and passionfruit. The next was coffee ice-cream. And the last was mascarpone with cubes of pain d’epices on top (can’t catch me, Je suis le pain d’epices homme!). This was the best I could distill from the friendly waitress pre-espresso, fig was hard work enough. Mind you not friendly enough to turn a blind eye and let me snap away with my indiscreetly large camera.

And yes it was nice. Since I don’t sensorially respond strongly to desserts and I don’t make enough to appreciate from a technical perspective. It’s like showing the innards of an F1 engine to someone who only knows they’re the things that go broom. Undeniably it was charming, the mousse part begged to be dissassociated with hair volumisers, the other chocolate part was chewy like toffee without being chewy like toffee, and the ganache had the buttery sensual import not seen since…well…I won’t go there again.

As I absentmindedly pecked away, trying to get the spoon to fit that not quite distance to the bottom of the choccy shot glass, in the flicker of light from the leafy mirror I imagined Pierre himself appear in front me. ‘What did you think?’ he asks. ‘Well it was nice’ … ‘like grandma’s biscuits’ we say in unison. I suggest he use some meat or fish and maybe instead of ice-cream he could have a nice rich gravy or perhaps a tasty hollandaise…it would at least make you a little less unsavoury. And as I look up to see the response to my imagined tremendous joke he has vanished and I was back to pecking at my glass under the watchful gaze of the third attendant in the cafe to watch over me.

I pay. It was around $25, not a ridiculous amount by any stretch but I then go and spend a similar amount downstairs on three macaroons, a couple of chocolates and a Pierre Herme tattoo sheet, hoping perhaps, his charms might rub off on me.

Tags: cafe, japan, tokyo

Mail!

March 17, 2006 in ramblings | 30 comments

Dear Anthony

As much as I like long accounts of food preparation, I was wondering if you had any pictures of Buzz Aldrin next to a giant green apple instead?

Best regards
Craig

Why as a matter of fact I do.

Happy to oblige Craig.

Tags: moon landing

Chicken and Mushroom Quiche with Movie

March 8, 2006 in basics, old school, pastry, pies, ramblings | 7 comments

Today is International Women’s Day. Spiceblog is well regarded as a leader in gender issues on the internet in Australia so I shouldn’t let this slip by. As is often said, where the mirror cannot be found, the dish will do. Last Friday I went to the outdoor movies and I made a quiche. For those around at the time, the quiche was a minor celebrity in the crisis of manhood in the early 80s – second only to the manbag. It managed to inspire a book “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” with the punchline being “they eat ham and egg pie”. Hoohoo indeed! I’m not sure where this animosity came from, I mean it’s not as if half our language isn’t French already or that manliness is derived from an earthy literalness that would have us saying that’s not a carburettor, it’s a device to regulate the flow of fuel and air into the cylinder. Possibly it was a kind of no-nonsense response that played into a myth of the fall. The fall being the defeat in 1066 by the Normans which destroyed the priveleged position of good honest monosyllables and all things Arthury or something. So ingrained in me was this that there was a moment of hope that since I didn’t have a quiche tin and had to use a cake tin, the lack of scalloped edge and the relative heightiness meant that it would be a pie. It wasn’t

Get yourself some short-crust pastry, butter a tin, cut a circle of pastry out, place it in the bottom. Cut some strips out to go around the edge. Seal up any gaps and blind bake for 10 minutes at 220C. If you haven’t done this before, it’s just to get it nice and crusty. Place some dried beans on the pastry to stop it puffing up. I disn’t have any beans so I used some ceramic hashioki. Just put a sheet of baking paper under them.

Mix was one chicken breast which I left to marinate for an hour in Ras al Hanout spices. Pan cooked and shredded. About a cup of chopped field mushrooms and then a third as much chopped spring onions and a third as much of that in chopped scallions all gently cooked in butter. Mix together with the chicken and a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley. Four whole eggs, half as much cream, and half again of cheddar I had. OK alright there’s maths here but are you going to have the same amount of spring onions as mushrooms? No. Half as much mushrooms as chicken maybe. I wanted mix with eggy bits just holding it together and I got it. How much cheese do you want? Make a decision. Salt and pepper. Cook at 180C until you dip a knife in it and it comes out clean and then take it out and cool it on a rack. You can then pop it back in the tin for easy transportation to said French film.

Film of which was French film The Story of My Life – dealing with thirthysomething doubt regarding artistry versus commerce versus success versus failure versus risk versus identity versus vulagarity versus the woman you have versus the woman you want all mixed together in a second act snarl up with comedic result and character switchovers.

Tags: eggs, picnic, pie

Jackson’s – further adventures of a gentleman chef

March 3, 2006 in jacksons, ramblings | 10 comments

I’m still at Jackson’s every Thursday but I still live in a kind of titular haze. [For those coming in late] I’m certainly not a chef, I’m not technically an apprentice, and I’ve lingered longer than the typical work experiencer. Dilettante, duffer, hanger-on, kitchen fop, thirtysomething man in kitchen scene… I think I was settled on gentleman chef in the sense of the gentleman farmer rather than any particular gentility. A kind of jolly good involvement while others go about the work they do every day, well. I described this in a separate conversation and I was asked like wandering in and spending 20 minutes fixing your apron?, which is exactly what I do do, so I guess there must be something in it.

What I do after I carefully arrange my apron and check my hat’s on OK varies from week to week. Last week I was taught how to do chocolate decoration using a small piping bag made from baking paper and made orange and poppyseed biscuits as part of the meal’s end. The week before that I seemed to have spent a couple of hours taking the leaves off herbs. Not quite as straightforward as it seems, coriander goes in the salad spinner to dry, mint doesn’t because it’ll break the leaves and they’ll blacken. Parsley varies from leaf to leaf and the tougher ones should be the ones left whole as garnish. Vietnamese mint gets separated into shoots and leaves. The best way to rinse them is in a bowl but don’t do what I did and pour it through a strainer because you’ll just pour the sand over the leaves again. It’s good if you can guess the right amount that will fit into a container and they should be covered with a dampened paper towel.

During service I’d do my regular tasks of veg and two salads but as there’s an extra person on I thought I’d ask if I could go down the other end and watch mains being done. The last Thursday I got to work the mash and pour the lamb sauce. This may seem a quite small thing to do and, out of context it is, but for me it’s a big deal. There is a direct link between what I put on the plate and what is put in front of a guest.

Last Thursday was a great day. As well as the usual small picking and prepping I made the bread rolls for the day, had dinner, and then took my place at the mains end with Michelle and Mark. It takes a little while to get people in, ordered and their entrees sorted and then it goes. It’s a small space and I try not to get in the way but I was assured I’d be worked around and over if I was. My first task was to make small “shepherd’s pies” in small tarts – the trick is to cover it neatly with mash without spilling gravy over the sides or dragging it up over the mash, it took me a couple of goes. As well as this I did over a dozen different things to my usual four or five. Four salads and two veges, zapping darioles in the microwave, saucing, truffled mash for side orders and roquefort mash for the plates – trying to get a balance between under and overcompensating for serving size and taste, cooking brussel sprout leaves, grabbing plates, making small piles of couscous and chutney, making sure I kept things hot, deep frying rabbit meat croquets and small pappadums, taking on criticism and adding a bit of chat, dashes out to the cool room AND, and this is the yes moment, plating a plate on my own. Centering a dob of mash in time for Michelle to place the wagyu beef on top; then on with the sauce; taking the chanterelles, bacon, and onion mix from the pan balancing it on top; further balancing several brussel sprout leaves; giving the plate a clean; and then calling the order. Mark was good enough to say “that’s the Jacksons there” *blush*, I learnt that if you faf something up, e.g. my unsuccessful balancing act, you only get about two goes at fixing it up before it just becomes a mess. But yes someone’s steak course in the degustation menu presented by me, bang right between their cutlery. Should have taken a picture.

The experience so far has been entirely positive for reasons well beyond just the culinary aspects. As a person who is fond of instant gratuity, the process has been slow but entirely appropriate. Things learnt well are always learnt properly from the basics and worked up to. In one sense it resembles a dojo where you don’t start by practicing head kicking 20 encircling challengers or insisting that you be taught the crane kick. I’m also a person who generally takes criticism very badly and very personally and I’m getting this worked out of me. Frankly being told off by a seventeen year old apprentice is humbling and appropriate all and the same time and I’ve never been told anything that was unfair or incorrect. It’s the small details that get picked up on that make the staff so professional, if I couldn’t accept this I’d be a sobbingsniffy wreck. Learn, move on, and do it right the next time. It’s also eight or so hours of work, worky work, work that is referred to as real or honest work, and unlike, I dunno, digging ditches, it’s interesting and demanding. And what’s more it’s team work in the way that a thousand catch me I’m falling workshops aspire to – I think people are too good at what they do and too busy to have time to develop a dysfunctional workplace. And they feed me pork belly, I should return the favour by not singing at work – they deserve better.

Mental note: winged plates, entree bowls, veg bowls, rectangular rabbit plates.

Salmon Salad with a Soy Ginger Dressing

February 23, 2006 in basics, ramblings, salad, vegetables | 11 comments