Category: Reflections

In My Kitchen, April 2022

There’s always more to do in a garden, the commitment is ongoing, but the work keeps me sane in these dark times. Once I cross the threshold, which is a rather unromantic industrial looking tall gate, I find peace, timelessness and a belief in something greater than my own existence, a space beyond the worries of the world. I suppose you could call it hope, as vegetable gardening is about the future, a belief that through careful nurturing, the earth will be productive and plants will provide more food, that the bees and insects will continue to play their role, that seed will become flower, and flower fruit, then seed once more.

When I walk through the orto, I enter a trance like state, while still unconsciously doing what needs to be done. A little weeding here and there, gently transplanting self – sown lettuces to better spots, coaxing a pumpkin vine to take a different route, or watching the white butterfly moths as they rise from the brassica beds in the morning sun, and all this under a vast sky, wrapped in total silence and the aura of our planet, until a kookaburra laughs from the gum trees beyond, kookoook kaakaa, breaking the spell. It’s meditation and an antidote to these times, but it’s also fragile, so fragile. I close the gate behind me and return to the kitchen, the other centre of life for me. Nature and nurture.

Autumn is the busiest time of the year in the garden and consequently so it is in my kitchen. The tomatoes are still producing, but slowing down now. Their life cycle began in late July, when I germinated the seed in our north facing windows. It has been a long journey and now the seed is being selected from the best plants to preserve for seeding later this year. Every year I plant around 15 San Marzano tomatoes. Their fruit, an egg shaped thick skinned tomato, is kept strictly for saucing. To date we’ve made passata from around 21 kilos of fruit. This year one plant surprised me. We had a few spare plants leftover and so I shoved one in the citrus grove, adding a spade full of compost and some sugar cane mulch. It has grown into a sprawling ground bush of around two metres square. To date, I’ve picked 96 tomatoes from it, and there are still heaps more green tomatoes ripening. It will survive for another month.

The peppers and capsicums are all turning red, finally, which means it’s preserving time in the kitchen. Traditional Italian recipes use the old techniques of sott’olio and sott’aceto, under oil and under vinegar, or sun drying and salt curing. I’ve been inspired by the recipes found in Preserving the Italian Way, by Pietro Demaio. I first read about this specialist cookbook in the April edition of Gourmet Traveller and during an insanely annoying 3 am insomniac moment, I purchased a copy. It arrived promptly and I’ve used two recipes to date. The book includes chapters on preserving vegetables in oil and vinegar, then moves on to chapters on funghi, olives, herbs, syrups, bread, fish, cheese, cured meats, wine and liqueurs. Other than the meat chapter, I will get great use out of this book. It’s a gem. Today I bottled a jar of long red chillies under vinegar, and made the delicious sounding Involtini di Peperoni, little rolled capsicum strips stuffed with anchovy, capers and chilli preserved under oil. Both these preserves are now hidden in a dark spot for a month or so to cure. I often wonder why I do this when big jars of preserves such as peppers, cucumbers, capsicums and so on are cheap to buy from shops such as Bas Foods, Terra Madre, Harvest and Psarakos, to name a few of my favourite places. The cost of white wine vinegar has increased dramatically over the last two years, (ordinary white vinegar isn’t recommended for preserving) and using good olive oil, as recommended by Pietro, does not come cheaply. I guess the proof will be in the eating. The produce is organic and the process is hand crafted rather than industrial.

pickled long red chillis

Involtini di peperoni. Capsicum strips stuffed with caper, chilli and anchovy.

This year’s fruits were disappointing. Only the apples were prolific as well as the figs, which are finally ripening. Most of the other fruits lost their flowers during an extremely destructive storm last Spring, affecting power supplies and bringing down trees across the State. One of my favourite apple concoctions comes from a cookbook by Lorenza de’Medici.1 I’ve written about this lovely dessert before, but it’s worth re- visiting the recipe, as I do every Autumn. If you grow the fruit, your only expense is the butter for the pastry and a slug of Marsala, for the lovely fruit mixture, if not also for you. If you can’t be fussed (that almost sounds like a slip of the tongue) making the pastry, the fruit mixture makes an excellent crumble.

Charlotte di frutta.

For the Short pastry.

  • 350 g plain flour
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 125 g sugar
  • 225 g butter
  • pinch of  salt

For the filling

  • 1 orange
  • 300 g blood plums
  • 1 kg apples
  • 225 g sugar
  • grated peel of 1 lemon
  • 2 Tbsp Marsala
  • 3 cloves

Method

  1. Prepare the short crust pastry. Place the dry ingredients in the food processor, add the butter, process, then the egg yolks, until mixed and formed into a ball. ( you can do this by hand if you prefer). Roll or press into a flat slab, wrap in cling wrap and let rest in the fridge for an hour or so.
  2. Meanwhile, make the filling. Grate the orange peel and reserve. Peel the orange, removing any pith, and divide into segments. Peel the plums and apples and cut into pieces. Cook the fruit together with the sugar, lemon and orange peel, Marsala, cloves and vanilla pod for 20 minutes, uncovered, over low heat.
  3. Butter and flour a 25 cm springform pan. Roll out two-thirds of the pastry to line the base and sides of the pan. Fill with the cooled cooked fruit and cover with the remaining pastry, rolled out thinly. Cook in a preheated oven at 180 degrees c /350 f for 45 minutes. Let cool before removing from the pan. Dust with icing sugar,and serve at room temperature with cream Serves 8-10.
Charlotta di Frutta

Not far from my garden, the sprawling chook house is another spot where I can lose myself totally. I do like our eggs so much. Some of our lovely lunches consist of a herb omelette and a garden salad. As most of my larger chooks are now in semi- retirement, living out their remaining years in relative chook luxury, with an orchard to run in, spare greens from our garden, and a tree to perch in, some decisions need to be made about the blokes. There are too many roosters so two must go. Discussing the methods of dispatch is akin to the opening scenes of Macbeth, ‘If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly’. Gone are the days when some locals would happily take young roosters to eat, or the Cambodians would bid a dollar or two for a fancy rooster, especially the black skinned silkies, at the Mernda poultry auction. That old market site is now a new sprawling suburb. Last week we visited a nearby hatchery in the Yarra Valley and bought 6 female day old chickens- don’t ask what happens to the newly hatched roosters. And don’t ask what the free range egg farmers do with their laying hens after 18 months when they become less productive. It’s a mean old world.

I’m definitely keeping this fella, he’s quiet and a bit fancy.
Six day old chickens, which were popped under a clucky hen on dark. She eagerly tucked them under her white warm fluffy body.
Lunch sorted

Happy easter Holidays dear Readers. And thanks to Sherry who hosts this monthly In My Kitchen series. My kitchen and garden come as a total package so you can excuse the divergence from the main theme.

Just out of the oven this morning, sourdough HC Buns. We ate four, with butter. This is the easiest and by far the tastiest recipe I’ve made in a while. It’s a keeper. Contact me if you would like the recipe.

of cockatoos and cousins unknown

In the late afternoon, the call stretched across the yard and into the distance, a larger than life sound, ‘Yvonne…… Isabel‘. The girls’ names were elongated with pleading vowels, gentle yet insistent. The incessant winds carried the calls further. It was a mother calling her children at dusk or tea time or at 6 o’clock, whichever came first. ‘Yvonne…… Isabel’, the voice seemed to come from the sea bleached weatherboard house, urging the girls to come home, to return from their vast playground of sky, sea and distance that made up the fishing village of Port Albert. The weathered house was unadorned, unpainted, a homemade shack. Attempts at domestic beautification included a patch of spongy buffalo grass which was impossible to mow, and an overgrown cigar fuchsia, which attracted honey eaters when in flower. The rainwater tank near the backdoor was home to a large venomous brown snake, especially during summer, when it curled under the tank stand for shade and came out for a drink when the tap was left dripping. The outhouse toilet was down a grassy track beyond the tank with the snake. ‘Yvonne…. Isabel‘, the second call, five minutes later, became more urgent. ‘Tea’s ready‘ was perhaps all that was implied, but then the front yard was the sea, and as the tide turned in Corner Inlet, the muddy mangroves became quickly submerged. Beyond the mangroves, deep sea channels filled with swirling eddies as the tide rapidly moved across the sand, dangerous to anyone except the most experienced of boat navigators who saw the channels as sea routes back home to the Port. And further out on the horizon, the bushy headland of Snake Island became a Sphinx on dusk: that dark, terrible shadow scared most young children. The Sphinx Head knew all the secrets of the sea, of all those cousins who ‘met their watery grave’. ‘Yvonne….. Isabel, the cry carried across that austere but magical landscape.

My Grandparents, Grace and Charles Robinson, at Port Albert with Cocky.

I never heard that woman’s call, and yet it is vividly recalled. By the time my memories began, her call had been perpetuated by Cocky, the pet cockatoo who lived with my grandparents. Cocky continued to call their names in the late afternoon. Like a recording from the past, Cocky’s call, although a little scratchy sounding, especially as they claimed he was at least 100 years old, preserved their childhood long after they had left and grown up. Cocky’s evening call for Yvonne and Isabel captured the lengthened vowels of the Australian bush coo- ee, except with tenderness entwined with rising anxiety. I never knew the woman, or Yvonne and Isabel, who were/are my cousins. They had departed long before my visits to the Port. No one spoke much about them: a ‘broken’ marriage was a taboo subject back then. They left and that was that. My uncle Fred, the father of those girls, was a fisherman at Port Albert in those days, and spent some time as the lighthouse keeper on Maatsuyker Island, an isolated job that is said to drive one insane. Fred became a dedicated alcoholic, ending up in a men’s boarding house in Moreland Road, Brunswick, when that part of Melbourne was considered a ghetto for the poor or dispossessed.

Uncle Fred on the right, my father, Jack, on the left. 1940s

Uncle Fred, the owner of Cocky, taught him a few colourful phrases and tricks. It was said that Cocky had had a previous owner, so some of Cocky’s party tricks may have come down through time. Apart from calling for those girls each evening, Cocky could swear with passion, and sing and dance like a cabaret star. He definitely had mood swings. To this day I’m not sure if Cocky simply replicated Uncle Fred’s moods, from singing to cursing, the range of emotions induced by alcohol, or whether Cocky had his own real moods. Although a pet, he only spent part of the day in a cage, which was the place where he was more likely to perform his song and dance routines, Cocky want to Dance. When free, he would often enter my grandparents’ house through the back door and stomp around the living room in a bad mood, yelling bloody bugger bloody bugger, terrifying all who were present. His ugly moods may have been an attention seeking act, the expressed anger and words learnt from Uncle Fred.

I also have a pet Cocky who, like Uncle Fred’s Cocky, has no special name. It always makes me laugh when I hear about others who call their pet cockatoos Ralph or Kevin. My Cocky reminds me of the past, of all the cousins I never met, and of my grandparents who lived at the Port, whose simple lives were in tune with nature and the tides. When my Cocky first visited, he looked unkempt, dirty and thin. He had brown dust marks on his chest and seemed to be a loner. Over the last two years, Cocky has become a gracious bird: his white coat glistens, he is well fed and clean with a beautiful deep lemon crest: at one point last year, he also had a mate. He also has his foul moods. Most of the time he sits on the same broken bough of our Melia Azedarach tree at about head height. He seems to enjoy listening to us talk to him and is not simply after a free handout of sunflower seeds. And yet there are days when he stomps around our verandah table, throwing things off with obvious displeasure, as if he is annoyed by our mess. If we’re away from home for more than a day, we return to find all sorts of odds and ends removed from the small green verandah cupboard and thrown about on the ground. He is either wise, gentle and a good listener, or an angry bird. Perhaps I should call him Fred.

Cocky in a pleasant mood.

In Memory of my cousin L Vardy, another cousin I never met, who passed away last year. Len’s poem, Home, takes me straight back to Port Albert and to Pop, that skilled navigator, the grandfather we both shared.

Extract from a work in progress. Another extract can be found here.

Melbourne Then and Now

I have a great fondness for the city of Melbourne. I recall travelling to the city by train frequently as a child, though back then, it was always called ‘town’, a term I still like, akin to the Italian concept of ‘centro‘. ‘Town’ back then meant the centre of Melbourne, particularly the commercial hub from Flinders street through to Bourke street via the arterial network of wonderful dark lanes and arcades. The route, chosen by my mother, usually included various shortcuts underground then along Degraves St, crossing over to the ornately tiled and arched Block Arcade where she spent time as a teenager working in a florist shop. My father spent his working life in the Customs House, a grand old colonial building in Flinders Street, which now houses the Immigration Museum. If he knew beforehand which train we were on, he would wave to us from his second floor window, not that we could see him, but my mother would know. ‘Wave to Dad’, she would say as we passed by. Going to town was part of our upbringing and education: train travel was central to where we lived. It became my escape route from bland suburbia. The grid layout of the city was the key map and we learnt to draw it at an early age, along with learning by rote the names of the stations along the line. The train trip grew in excitement as the view of the industrial docklands appeared to the right, a warning that we were nearly there, followed by the frightening proximity of a dark grey Dickensian looking building to the left, the deeper shadows and grandeur of the city’s architecture, Dad’s Customs House, and the final arrival at Flinders Street station, with subways lined with white and green tiles, spittoons, people in a hurry and men in hats. The highlight of a trip to town would also involve lunch, usually at Coles Cafeteria. Lining up with a tray, and being permitted to choose from an array of pies, cut sandwiches in points and a jellied sweet was the only time we ever ate away from home.

To this day, I’m still very fond of trips to the city, though my train journey is much longer and doesn’t trigger any flashbacks of looming ancient buildings and the scenery of my childhood. As I’m not an avid shopper, I’ve found a new excuse to visit the city more often, or at least I did until the Melbourne lockdowns began. The Melbourne City Library is conveniently located in Flinders Lane, the most vibrant library in Melbourne. By ordering books on line, I had a wonderful excuse to travel along the pulsating lanes of Melbourne, which are memory lanes for me. Of course this library is now closed for browsing, and during lockdown, closes completely. 

I’m not sure why Mr Tranquillo suddenly produced a book from our overflowing and somewhat shabby home library: perhaps I had been reminiscing about these times. He found the book in an op shop some years ago, though I have never laid eyes on it before today, which is a good enough reason not to clean out or prune the library. Edwardian Melbourne in Picture Postcards ¹, includes a wonderful selection of old postcards held at the State Library of Victoria. One page is devoted to each, with details of the location, the printer of each, and a transcript of the letter on the back. I now have another legitimate reason to visit the city, to capture the modern equivalent of each photo, taken from the same location. Standing in the middle of the road, and attempting to photograph above a sea of people may present a few problems.

Below, a selected photo postcard from the collection, taken in 1913 and printed in three colours in Germany, followed by my photo taken in November 2020, when the city of Melbourne, post lockdown, was still very quiet. And the book which inspired this post.

Flinders Lane, Melbourne 1913. This view of the busy intersection of Flinders Lane and Swanston Street was taken a little way up Flinders Lane, looking west. Collotype with three colours. Printed In Germany. Shirley Jones Collection, State Library of Victoria.
Little Collins St, Melbourne. November 2020. View looking north towards Bourke Street. Taken when Melbourne first opened from the second hard lockdown and was still deathly quiet.
Edwardian Melbourne in Picture Postcards, Alexandra Bertram and Angus Trumble. Melbourne University Press, 1995.

Take a Slow Road Trip to rekindle your sense of wonder

Australian road trips are long and often arduous affairs, depending on your view of the world. In our recent getaway after Melbourne’s ‘Ring of Steel’ was removed, which allowed Victorians freedom of movement within their own State after many months of hard lockdown, we travelled way out west to visit a friend who lives in the Wimmera, then headed to Portland on the south west coast, returning home six days later, a total journey of 1110 kilometers, not counting side trips. There are two schools of thought when it comes to planning a road trip. The old school approach plans on getting from A to B as quickly as possible. It involves travelling along major routes and highways at the speed limit. Fuel stops, lunch and toilet breaks are hasty, usually consisting of take away food from huge highway service centres, soulless and treeless places. The second approach focuses on back roads, with preference given to minor C or D roads for most of the journey, stopping along the way to walk around small towns, visiting historic sites, and taking photos along the way. Back roads are rarely frequented by trucks, speed demons, or people attached to a time frame, a construct that is based on the idea that the destination is more important than the journey. In a back road journey, a country town’s bakery might offer a tasty pastie for lunch while a packed thermos of hot water provides a cup of tea along the way. There’s always a park with picnic tables under a shady tree, a gazebo or picnic hut in an Australian country town. 

My preference for back road journeys began at some point during the late 1980s after reading the iconic road trip story, ‘Blue Highways’, by William Least Heat Moon  ( born William Lewis Trogdon). Travelling around the USA in an old van, Heat Moon chose only the “blue highways”. He coined the term to refer to small, forgotten, out-of-the-way roads connecting rural America: these roads were drawn in blue on old maps. During his three month journey, he visited small towns with interesting names, meeting quite a few characters and documenting the history of each place along the way.  He took along a copy of Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’, considered to be the quintessentially American book, published in 1892, poetry which had little appeal to me when I was obliged to read it back the 1970s. I’m wondering what the archetypal Australian book might be to take along on an Aussie road trip in a van in 2020?

Travelling around Australia’s back roads that connect old towns, there’s more chance to collide with history. These old towns were important markers along the way before the major highways bi-passed them, cutting them off from passing trade. Nowadays, many are struggling to survive though quite a few are having a renaissance too. By revisiting them, there’s a chance to relive a long forgotten childhood memory of a trip taken so many years before, or to find ancestral farms and burial grounds, or to discover the importance of agriculture in the life of the Australian economy, a thing we often take for granted. Many small towns are graced with marvelous bluestone buildings, constructed by skilled Scottish stonemasons in the 1850s, as well as a surfeit of churches, most now obsolete, shrines to the many sects that divided the Christian religion during a previous era. Many Australian small towns were built after the success of gold mining or the sheep boom or during the grand building era of the 1890s. In each small town there’s a war shrine listing those who had died in the Great War, a reminder of how war devastated farming families and communities. Perhaps there’ll be a memorial avenue of large trees, or a bank of a river by which to loiter, or a country pub with a counter meal to distract you totally from your trip.

Driving along major roads you’ll miss this wonderful exploration of the past as well as the present so peaceful and appealing. But peel away this colonial veneer, the buildings, the churches, the old houses and quaint statues, the white history of our country places, and you may begin to see, perhaps for the first time, the indigenous history of the land, spelt out in land forms, native flora, in hidden billabongs and creeks.

First short leg, St Andrews to Woodend. C roads all the way,

On our recent road trip, the first leg took us to Woodend, a 99 km trip, via the country C or back roads towards Wallan, Donnybrook, Kalkallo, a most convenient and gentle way to leave the city without meeting much traffic or speed. This route skirts just beyond the outer fringes of Melbourne’s large suburban sprawl, the route notable for the beautiful ancient red gum trees, some believed to be 500 years old, that are dotted in paddocks along the way. Looking towards the horizon near Kalkallo, Bald Hill, the well worn hill of an old volcano, dominates the flat land. Bald Hill was noted in the diaries of our colonial ancestors who settled in this area in the 1840s. The large hill, seen from every road and angle, would certainly have been a significant marker for the indigenous people, prior to white invasion. The Merri Creek rises nearby. This creek was formed over many years by incising through the lava surface near Wallan, and then flows in a southerly direction for 70 km until it joins the Yarra River in Fairfield near Dight’s Falls and subsequently flows into Port Phillip Bay. Many Melbournians are familiar with Merri creek, given that it passes through many of the older suburbs of Melbourne, but few are familiar with its source. The Merri Creek was also vital for the first nation people of Melbourne.

“The Wurundjeri-willam had regular camping spots along the Merri Creek which they would visit according to season. In winter the low lying land next to the creek was subject to flooding and the general dampness made it an unsuitable place for camping. At this time they would move to the hills. In summer time when food supplies were plentiful along the creeks, clans would visit one another and host meetings and ceremonies.

Women were responsible for 90% of food collected, of which the staple were plants. All Wurundjeri-willam women carried a long fire hardened digging stick known as a kannan. They used their kannan to dig up the root or tuber of the murnong or yam daisy. It had a bitter taste in winter but became much sweeter when spring arrived.

The creek supplied the Wurundjeri-willam with an abundance of food such as eel, fish, and duck. Women waded through the Merri with string bags suspended around their neck, searching the bottom of the stream for shellfish. Emu and kangaroo were hunted in the surrounding grasslands.

In the forests and hills, possum was also a staple source of food and clothing, The flesh of the possum was cooked and eaten, while the skin was saved to be sewn into valuable waterproof cloaks.

These cloaks were fastened at the shoulder and extended to the knees. Clan designs were incised with a mussel shell tool into the inner surfaces of the skins. Wearing the fur side next to the body showed off the designs which were highlighted with red ochre.” *

As Melbourne’s Northern Growth Corridor begins to swamp this area with more suburban subdivision, cultural mapping is taking place in these areas near Wallan and Kalkallo. The Merri Creek was a significant route for the Wurrundjeri-willam people. Archeologists may reveal stone sharpening tools and middens along the billabongs and creeks, and perhaps not come across any sites of significance, but intangible indigenous history can be felt in these areas. You don’t need intact evidence, a birthing tree, a canoe tree or ancient fish traps to know that this land is culturally significant. And you don’t need a history book to tell you that massacre of the indigenous people took place nearby.

I’ll be returning to this area, which is not too far from home, next time to take photos of a land that reveals many surprises if you just take the time. I’m afraid that if I wait too long, the area, and the signs you can still read, will be buried under new housing estates.

Bunjil. Bunjil is a creator deity, cultural hero, and ancestral being, often depicted as a wedge tailed eagle (or eaglehawk) in the Australian aboriginal mythology of some of the aboriginal peoples of Victoria. When Bunjil visits us at home, we all rush outside to take photos. Photo by my daughter, Rachael.

A few holiday questions for you Dear Reader. What book would accompany you on a road trip in your country? Do you prefer to take C roads when travelling, assuming that you have all the time in the world? What makes a road trip special for you?

This is part one of my recent road trip. There will be more legs offered soon, I hope.

In My Kitchen September 2020

The season has been fruitful, especially with an abundant supply of all kinds of citrus, though this colourful presence is slowly coming to an end, with Blood and Valencia oranges the last varieties to pick. In Spring, the trees will return to flower and leaf production for next year. We have around 14 citrus trees but there’s always room for more. Most were planted around 10 years ago, with productivity hampered  by drought, wind, rabbit infestation and severe frost. They’ve now reached a stage of maturity where they can withstand most conditions.

There are two citrus trees producing oddities. These knobbly, thick skinned fruit grow on thorny wild trees. One wild tree used to be a grafted Kaffir lime tree. After dying in the recent drought, it re-sprouted, reverting back to old root stock below the graft. Although incredibly bitter to taste, the fruits are exotic, brightly coloured and decorative. They remind me of the Renaissance fascination with formal citrus gardens and the collecting of rare and unusual specimens. The paintings by Bartolomeo Bimbi and Giovanna Garzani, reveal this fascination for depicting bumpy, disfigured lemons and other rare agrumi. 

On that subject, The Land Where Lemons Grow, by Helena Attlee, documents the history of the Italian fascination with citrus and is a great read. Thank you Beck, at In Search of the Golden Pudding, for recommending this. In terms of food writing, it’s up there with Delizia! An Epic History of Italians and their Food, by John Dickie and Honey from a Weed, by Patience Gray.

Seville Marmalade Orange Cake

In My Kitchen there’s always cake: the peasants have no fear of starving. I make a cake weekly: in this cool weather, it keeps well under a glass dome sitting on the kitchen dresser. I often halve them and send some away to other cake loving peasants. Most double as pudding: a couple of slices gently warmed in the remaining heat of an oven, served with something wet ( cream, icecream, custard) have kept us sane during winter and the lockdown. I’ve now made two versions of the Seville orange marmalade cake, pictured above. The recipe can be found here. The second version pictured below is a classic Middle Eastern orange and almond cake, glazed in marmalade. I think I prefer the first version. Excess marmalade can be used as a glaze in many ways. Maybe a chocolate cake could turn Jaffa-esque when topped with an orange marmalade glaze? Or a little Seville marmalade stirred through a rice pudding? Served with Halloumi? Liquified then added to a G&T?

Middle eastern Orange cake glazed with Seville orange marmalade

The little pasta dish below looks quite plain, belying the richness and intense lemon/orange flavoured sauce hiding within its folds. The sauce includes fine slivers of peel from an orange and lemon, which are boiled to soften, and the juice, a little onion, a knob of butter, cream and seasoning.

Tagliolini alle Scorzette di Arancia e Limone, recipe included in the book mentioned above.

The egg noodles from Mantovanelle come very close to those made by hand at home. These tagliatelline are my favourite comfort food. Cooked in five minutes, this gives you just enough time to quickly construct a sauce. Once the pasta hits the boiling water, my large non- stick wok is fired up and ready to go. In goes the EV olive oil, a little garlic, followed by fresh things from the garden, small stems of broccoli, young leaves of kale, some herbs, a few tiny unshelled broad beans, a dash of wine, perhaps some smoked salmon chunks, a few dashes of cream, seasoning and finally the cooked noodles. It’s a merry little dance around 2 stove jets. When the long lockdown ends in Melbourne, I look forward to returning to my favourite food shops which are further than 5 kilometres from my home. Since early July, strict travel distance rules have regulated movement in Melbourne. This pasta will be at the top of my shopping list.

I love this egg pasta and cannot wait to be allowed to drive further afield to buy more supplies.

Tagliatellini con salmone affumicato e verdure

The winter garden has kept us in fresh greens and now that spring is here, broad beans are slowly appearing.

Garden pickings for a pasta lunch.

Another day, another pasta. Rigatoni paired with a vegetarian ragù. The sauce included some mushrooms, dried porcini, herbs, left over thick lentil soup, a little miso, and tomato passata.

rigatoni con ragu’ di lenticchie

In these times, I often find myself looking back rather than forward. I cannot think of anything at present to look forward to- no short drives in the country, a family gathering, dinner with friends, travels overseas, visits to the city, a Vietnamese meal, a trip to the library- it’s a life without anticipation. Often, our next meal is the highlight of the day. The arrival of a book in the post, or a food order from Mt Zero Olives, is an added bonus. In this era of hard lockdown, the future has become blurred. Last night, as we were eating dinner, a spaghetti cacio e pepe, the conversation inevitably led to Rome. Where did we eat that last Roman cacio e pepe, where would we stay next time, an apartment in Trastevere again ( too busy) or over in Testaccio ( interesting suburb) or in centro? Through reminiscing, we came to the realisation that we would not be returning to Italy, or indeed Europe, and perhaps not to our favourite haunts in Asia. This is not meant to be a maudlin observation: I am a pragmatist at heart. Looking back over some of my old posts has given me a chance to relive some of those travels: like writing a detailed journal, blogging is a worthwhile pursuit in this sense. Unlike Facebook or Instagram posting, blogging provides a permanent and accessible log into the past. In the same way, participating in the monthly In My Kitchen for the last 7 years has produced another kind of documentation. Over the years my kitchen posts have gravitated towards seasonal food and simple dishes. My previous September posts expose another story: I’m usually away. Thanks Sherry of Sherry’s Pickings for continuing this series: it has been an interesting journey.

Melbourne’s Six Seasons

Put away your trumpet, there’ll be no fanfare for the dawning of Spring. In Melbourne, the month of September is changeable, windy and unpredictable. Sunny days are often preceded by blistering cold. Gale force winds rip through the hills, bringing down branches from bare winter trees while the ‘darling buds’, the blossom on fruit trees, bravely hang on. There’s nothing especially attractive or romantic about Spring: the arrival of Primavera is invariably disappointing. Early Spring is like a moody teenager: all that white and pink confetti blossom helps to create a sense of hope and promise, yet the new season is accompanied by immaturity and mood swings. It’s a season on hormones. I’ve often returned to Melbourne in late September to be disheartened by the cold and windy weather.

This year I experienced my first Melbourne winter for 10 years and was surprised by the vibrant colour in the garden and the calm weather throughout late July and August. It isn’t surprising to learn that the Wurundjeri – Melbourne’s indigenous people who have lived around what is now Melbourne for thousands of years- have a calendar consisting of 6 seasons. The period from late July to the end of August is a distinct season in the indigenous calendar: it’s the time of nesting and first flowers. This year, this pre-spring season has been remarkably clement, sunny and still, with many joyous picnic kind of days.

One version of a graphic attempting to depict the Wurundjeri calendar. http://www.herringisland.org/seasons1.htm

 ” The division of the year into four seasons comes from Northern Europe, and does not fit Melbourne. We still think of winter as an unfavourable season for plants, when northern European trees drop their leaves and become dormant, but for our native plants, especially the small tuberous herbs, winter is a season of growth. At this time the bush is green, and the temperatures are rarely low enough to stop growth. The unfavourable season is high summer, when water is scarce, and much of the ground flora becomes brown and dies off. “¹

In the last two weeks of winter, I’ve observed new seasonal birds in the garden, attracted by the early pink/mauve flowering Echium. New Holland Honeyeaters, Eastern Spine Bills and Wattle birds have feasted on this large bush while on still days, hundreds of bees have had their turn. Once the honey eaters arrive, a seasonal indicator of sorts, I start sowing seeds, knowing that the sun’s angle will be perfect for germination inside my north facing window.

Native wattle trees have been in flower for weeks, with different species taking turns to paint the distant landscape with bright yellow patches of mini pom poms. The blue green leaves of the eucalypt drape and sway gracefully from tall healthy trees. They are in their prime in late winter. The native purple flowering creeper, hardenbergia violacia spent winter snaking its way along a fence while the mauve flowers on the tips of the silver leafed Teucrum Fruticans hedge have enjoyed this pre-spring season. Some non- native plants have also thrived in late winter, especially the euphorbia, a startling lime green show off, while the jonquils and daffodils, now spent, are a late winter pop up. One lone flag iris emerged under a pear tree. The citrus trees fruit in this little wedge of time between winter and spring- Navel, Washington and Blood orange fruits brightened the season. Now that Spring has arrived, they’ve finished their fruiting cycle, with energy directed to leaf and flower.

The late winter vegetable patch has supplied us with bitter salad leaves, chard, kale, turnips, green onions, leeks, broccoli, fennel and parsley. Spring will push these plants sky high: it’s now a race to eat as many of these liver cleansing greens as we can before they bolt to seed.

Picked greens for a Pizza di Verdure Pugliese.

This year’s pandemic and subsequent isolation forced me to regard winter with new eyes: I can honestly say, it wasn’t so bad. And now, let’s see what this season throws at us. Life has become as unpredictable as Spring. 

¹ There are many diagrams and charts illustrating aboriginal seasons, each one varying from place to place. The diagram above best illustrates Melbourne’s seasons. Diagram and quotation from http://www.herringisland.org/seasons1.htm

 

The Best Seville Orange Marmalade Cake

The search for a neighbourhood Seville orange tree began back in May. I’d just made a few batches of lime marmalade and had passed a jar on to a friend in our village. This inevitably led to a conversation via Messenger, ( aren’t all good conversations held this way during the pandemic? ) about the need to find some elusive Seville oranges to make the epitome of all marmalade, Seville Marmalade. I went as far as inquiring about Sevilles on our local community Facebook site. A respondent replied, an artist from the next village, who paints beautiful studio studies of seasonal fruit. In her walks, she had noticed some productive Seville orange trees and sent me monthly updates on the state of ripeness. Not only that, she picked 5 kilos, carried them to my daughter’s house, who then delivered them to my place. This season’s Seville Marmalade is now happily in jars, though plenty are walking out the front door.

The point of this simple little tale of two villages is that throughout this pandemic and months of lockdown, community consciousness has developed and now includes the sharing of major shopping trips, the cost of delivery services, spare garden produce, tools, and knowledge. Much of this is done through social media, which can be a tool for social change when used well. If there’s an up- side to the pandemic, it is this.

Seville Marmalade Cake

Ingredients
• 100 gr coarse-cut orange Seville marmalade ( approx 1/3 cup)
• 175 gr butter, softened, plus extra for greasing the pan
• 175 gr sugar
• 2 teaspoons grated lime zest ( optional) 
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• 3 large eggs at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• 190 gr all-purpose flour
• 7 gr baking powder
• pinch fine sea salt

Glaze/icing

  • 30 gr icing sugar
  • 100 gr Seville marmalade ( approx 1/3 cup)
  • knob of butter

Preparation
1. Heat oven to 175º c. Grease a 23 cm by 13 cm loaf pan. Line with baking paper.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together softened butter, sugar, lime zest and orange zest for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. Beat in the marmalade and orange juice. ( Tip: if the mixture looks like curdling when you beat in the eggs, add a little flour as you go) 
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Fold dry ingredients into wet until just combined.
4. Scrape batter into prepared pan. Bake until surface of cake is golden brown , about 50 to 55 minutes. Remove from oven and transfer pan to a
wire rack. Cool for  10 minutes before glazing.  then turn cake out of pan and place on rack right-side up. 
Glaze/icing. Heat the marmalade in a small pot over low heat until melted; whisk in icing sugar and butter until smooth. There are two approaches to adding the topping. EITHER  invert cake onto a tray, turn right way up then add the jammy topping which will run down the sides OR add the glaze to cake in the pan, which will concentrate the flavour to the top, though some will sink through and down the sides. When completely cool, lift from pan right way up. 

Keeps well for about 5 days

Notes.

Use any orange marmalade if you don’t have Seville, though that sweet bitter taste will be missing. Omit lime zest if you don’t have limes on hand and add a little more orange zest. I’ve left the ancient non-measurement, knob, because I love the sound of it. A knob could be anything you wish it to be: it’s also a crude  term of abuse in Australia- Don’t be a knob! A knob only applies to butter and is similar to that wonderful Italian cooking measurement qb or quanto basta, which means ‘as much as is enough’, or ‘to taste’ or as much as is needed to achieve the desired result.

Last few slices. The cake didn’t last long.

For a look at Kylie’s beautiful fruit painting, see @kyliesirett on Instagram or https://www.kyliesirett.com.au/

On Not Comparing Winter to a Summer’s Day

This year’s winter has brought so many charms, compensation enough for the cold. As the early morning light breaks over the horizon, the distant hills and clouds blend and cling to their darkness still. The lingering fog hovers over the Diamond Creek, vacillating, waiting, before moving along the valley. The sharp crystal light captures the work of the night weavers, strings of pearls webbed between gnarly branches, holding the night rain, ethereal but strong. I imagine wearing this exquisite rivière for one second, more alluring than gemstones, a spider girl’s best friend.

The winter flowers have more charm than their spring cousins, their appearance always surprising and more welcome. The first delicate jonquils of June exhilarate with perfume, while the long flowering fronds of the Hardenbergia Violacea glow deep magenta in the early light. Blossom spurs fatten on the pear trees, the coned tips of the Echium engorge: the more abundant seasonal rain will make these creatures shout in purple and blue when the time comes. Pale green lichen hugs the Melia Azedarach, an exotic knitted sleeve that will dry out in summer’s harsh winds. Brave dying oak leaves, copper and russet, cling to the trees, Pre- Raphaelite colours brightening the driveway.

I’m learning to understand winter and may even like her now. But then it’s only late June. While the light slowly returns, the cold winds will come and shock that early promise back into dormancy. It’s not yet time to rejoice.

 

 

 

Thoughts Arising From a Tune

Sometimes a snippet of a song becomes lodged in my brain for days, like the needle of an old record player stuck in a groove, playing the same bit over and over again, a reminder that madness is just around the corner. The line in question here is, ‘I come from the salt water people’ from the song ‘My Island Home‘, written by Neil Murray of the Warumpi band, recorded in 1988. In the song, for those readers who aren’t familiar with it, the narrator is stuck working in the desert for six long years and longs to return to his homeland by the sea. It encapsulates, in a lighthearted yet melancholic way, the deep cultural ties between country and aboriginal identity. 

As the song line continued to play, my mind wandered back to all the other great songs written during the 1980s that gave voice to the issue of indigenous civil rights. These include include Kev Carmody’s From Little Things Big Things Grow, which tells the story of the Gurindji people’s struggle for equality and land rights after their walk off at the Wave Hill property in 1966. Archie Roach’s Took the Children away, Yothu Yindi’s Treaty, as well as protest songs from non- indigenous bands such as Midnight Oil’s, Beds are Burning, and Goanna’s  Solid Rock. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, land rights street marches were held frequently in major cities. The chant, ‘what do we want, land rights, when do we want them, now,’ was one my children grew up with. Through song, protest, literature, ( for example, Sally Morgan’s My Place) and historical research into the unspoken genocide which took place in Australia throughout the 19th century, (historians such as Henry Reynolds, Don Watson, Peter Gardner),  Paul Keating’s inspirational Redfern Speech, 1992, and the Mabo Decision and the Native Title Act of 1993, the general public, the non- indigenous as well as indigenous communities had good reason to feel optimistic. The recommendations made by The Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody, 1987-91 also made many feel hopeful that the days of institutional racism might be over. ( see findings of the commission here)

So what has happened since the 80s-90s? All that good will, community hope, and expectation that came with the new century? Over the last twenty years, not a great deal. Here’s a very quick summary of things that stand out. I’ll start with a few positives:

  • Kevin Rudd’s sorry speech for the Stolen Generation, February 2008, became symbolically important and a momentous occasion for all Australians.
  • Welcome to country and the acknowledgement of traditional elders is now read at most official gatherings. At times these are deeply moving, at other times, tokenistic.
  • Adnyamathanha man, football player and community leader, Adam Goodes, received an Australian of the Year Award for his “leadership and advocacy in the fight against racism both on the sporting field and within society”. This followed a period of disturbing racism in football, from both commentators and fans.
  • Bruce Pascoe publishes Dark Emu, 2014. The book re- examines colonial accounts of Aboriginal people in Australia, and cites evidence of pre-colonial agriculture, engineering and building construction by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Meanwhile the right wing press debates Pascoe’s claim to indigenous ancestry. Evidence is questioned. The history wars are back on the agenda. 
  • The situation of aboriginal deaths in custody has worsened. The recommendations made by the Royal Commission 30 years ago have not been acted upon.
  • The rejection by the Turnbull Government of the Uluru Statement From the Heart was a profoundly sad day for Indigenous people and all Australians. Malcolm, you’re hands are not clean. Read the Uluru statement here.
  • Rio Tinto blows up 46,000 year old Julukan Gorge heritage caves in Western Australia, a major indigenous cultural site and human historical site, and says sorry: nothing else happens. Further destruction of 40 Aboriginal heritage sites is planned to take place in the Pilbarra.
  • A statue of Stirling, a colonial murderer of indigenous people in Western Australia is ‘defaced’. The perpetrator is charged with criminal damage. Pass me that spray can.
  • Marches are back on our streets, with the spotlight on indigenous deaths in custody in the  black lives matter movement here in Australia. Will the momentum keep up?

The following link from last year’s Guardian provides an interactive map of the massacres of indigenous communities that took place throughout the 19th century. A genocide map, most of the research was done by historians in the 1980s and 90s.

My Island Home, by Neil Murray

Six years I’ve been in the desert
And every night I dream of the sea
They say home is where you find it
But will this place ever satisfy me
For I come from the saltwater people
We always lived by the sea
Now I’m out here west of Alice Springs
With a wife and a family

And my Island Home
My Island Home
My Island Home is a waiting for me

In the evenin’ the dry wind blows from the hills and across the plain
I close my eyes and I’m standin’ in a boat on the sea again
And I’m holding that long turtle spear
And I feel I’m close now to where it must be
And My Island Home is a waitin’ for me

Photo, Lake Tyers, East Gippsland, Victoria. Looking toward the Lake Tyers Aboriginal trust.

I was planning to examine the role played by Angus McMillan in the genocidal massacres of indigenous communities in East Gippsland during the 1840s in this post, but became diverted. During my recent travels to that area, I discovered some more recent histories on that topic and am pleased to note that libraries have re-opened for picking up reserved books. 

Is Your Mother Sweet or Savoury?

Mothers’s Day, La Festa Della Madre, always presents a few dilemmas. To celebrate or not, to give gifts or not. The commercialisation of the day is viewed with suspicion in my family, however for grandmothers and great -grandmothers, this day often has more significance. In the past, we’ve enjoyed small family gatherings with my mother, often in the dining room of the Lomond Hotel. A table for nine, set with white linen and fresh flowers, free bubbles for the ladies, followed by a simple three course meal, it was an easier way to get together than at Christmas. My mother always gave small gifts to her three daughters on this day, recognising that we are all mothers. This year, as my mother is in residential care, visits are not yet permitted. The facility management is adhering to very strict guidelines and has partially opened up: one designated family member may visit her once a week. To err on the side of caution makes sense, given that the elderly are so susceptible to the devastating effects of this plague. And as for my immediate family, none of us are planning to break the gathering rules. I’ll miss her today, but she does enjoy a long phone chat.

Crostata di albicocche

My biggest dilemma today is this- sweet versus savoury for Mother’s day? I’ve gone with both. For my daughter, a mother of three daughters and two leggy whippets, a crostata filled with apricot jam, Crostata di Albicocche, and for my caring son, a sourdough Panmarino bread filled with baked garlic and fresh rosemary. 

Panmarino sourdough with baked garlic. A small blowout in the centre of the salty crown. Sourdough, like life, is rarely perfect. ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember.’

When it comes to sweet versus savoury, I think I’d choose the garlic- laced bread. I may need to steal a slice or two of that loaf. How would you choose, dear reader? 

Buddlea in late bloom
My Mother on her 97th birthday
Buddlea, bee attracting flowers.