A couple of Sundays ago, the following things occurred to me in roughly the following order:
When you’re travelling with kids there are obvious culinary allowances you have to make, especially in south east Asia. Our kids go to bed pretty early so we can’t eat late. We tend to eat at relatively ’safe’ (read: sanitary) places and have to avoid stuff that the kids may find too freaky or spicy. Plus, the kids tend to want to do things other than eating (weird, I know) so we will have to save the major culinary excursions for when the kids are old enough to leave with the grandparents for several days at a time.The Hong Kong bender for my 40th and Pete’s 50th birthday has entered the planning stage… » Read more: Balinese chicken salad
Pasta. Honestly, I’m really rather over it. Too heavy, too stodgy, too much not enough fun. The Italian futurist Marinetti launched a campaign against pasta in the 1930s writing that “futurist cooking will be liberated from the ancient obsession with weight and volume, and one of its principal aims will be the abolition of pastasciutta. Pastasciutta, however grateful to the palate, is an obsolete food; it is heavy, brutalising and gross; its nutritive qualities are deceptive; it induces scepticism, sloth and pessimism”. » Read more: Two great vegetarian pasta dishes
One of my pet peeves is produce snobs -you know, people (by which I mostly mean TV chefs) who rhapsodise over the glories of an invariably expensive and impossible to obtain product. Quite often they will even tell you that you must not, ever ever ever, even think about attempting a particular dish if you cannot obtain this particular rarity. It’s not that I think they’re wrong, it’s just that it’s not at all helpful. Sadly, most of us have to jam food shopping,preparation and consumption into increasingly tiny apertures of our day and seeking out this kind of produce just ain’t going to happen. And when you live in a small country town like I do,exciting produce is by and large just a distant memory… » Read more: Orange and tarragon roast chicken with Vanessa’s squash
The greatest culinary crisis in my life came when I first started seeing a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This came after months of health problems that involved a large number of increasingly intrusive tests. When I finally got sick of being prodded and probed I took myself off to see Melbourne’s legendary Professor Lun Wong. » Read more: Lions head meatballs
My kids (currently aged 3 and 5) are pretty good eaters. This is certainly not to say that they will eat anything or everything that’s put in front of them but they are interested, enthusiastic and comfortable with a wide variety of flavours and ways of eating. We all eat together most nights of the week and by and large I haven’t altered my way of cooking terribly much since we became parents. Sometimes with more challenging meals, I’ll make an easier dish to go with it or make a separate kid-friendly version just for them. I figure that this way they can be introduced a wide range of food types without the pressure of having to eat a whole plateful of it. Food fear and pressure are unwelcome guests at our table. » Read more: Mango rice with sweet curry sauce
The last two weeks have literally been a blur of cooking,eating,friends and relatives, and forays into the stunning part of the world that is now our home – Cape Otway. If I may just relive,recap and bathe in the lingering culinary deliciousness of the festive season by sharing the following highlights: » Read more: Festive Highlights
In keeping with the family food vibe bit of this blog, this is really one for the kids. We had LOTS of guests over this Christmas / New Year which of course meant lots of cooking and drinking and drinking and eating (more highlights from this later). I’m on a real South – east Asian bender at the moment and much of this involved uncharacteristically hallucinogenic levels of chili and so could not really be considered family food. » Read more: Pork patties and pineapple salad
There is a place on Russell Street (I know many of you know it),wedged unpromisingly between the porn shop and the disposals. It’s called Nam Loong and, on an analysis of cost to gastronomic return it is hands down my favourite Chinese restaurant. Pete introduced me to it when we first met nearly 18 years ago now, and he was introduced to it by his biological father who had been going there for god knows how many decades since he moved to Australia from Malaysia. » Read more: Salted Chicken
You know you’re a parent when Christmas feels to you like like it’s approaching at the speed of light but to the small people in your life there’s clearly more than an eternity still to wait. It’s definitely time to start thinking food. It’s also time to start considering the annual logistical challenge of getting a large pine tree into our shoebox of a house, but that’s another story. Porchetta is really the ultimate festive roast beast to me. We had a beautiful boutique porchetta purchased from a deli in Lygon St for our wedding spread and I’ve been a big fan ever since. I’ve since fiddled around with a few recipes and have finally got a method sorted that seems to work consistently well for me. It takes a while to cook but is otherwise dead simple. This will definitely be appearing at Christmas lunch this year, probably with a lentil salad. » Read more: Porchetta
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