Sometimes, blissfully ecstatic experiences arise unexpectedly. It’s 40 degrees outside, or so they say and it sure feels like it. Our cheaply – built little house with it’s token gestures to insulation is an unbearable sweat-box by midday. The pool, farcically, is closed due to the New Year’s Public Holiday. Oh, the humanity! The northerly wind is blowing in hot air from the central desert and whipping sand up along the Apollo Bay Main Beach. One of the few places left to retreat is the relatively protected mouth of the Barham River where it flows into the open ocean. The Barham is a perfect Otways River. Flowing down from the rain forest, the water is clean (if not clear) and lovely. Before the river discharges into the Southern Ocean it opens out into a large, still pond at the back of the beach.

Duly we inflate the lilo, slather ourselves in sunscreen and drag ourselves out there. We are by this stage semi-comatose with heat. Dazed, confused and sweating we are concerned the winds are going whip the sand up into a frenzy of exfoliation but by the time we arrive they’ve dropped off and the place is a blissful oasis. The kids are ecstatic. The water is just warm enough to be cooling and comfortable and deep enough to be fun without being dangerous. The frolic. They embody joy. Pete and I take turns to head down to the surf, running across the burning sand to where the wild and immaculate Southern Ocean comes pounding onto the beach. The ocean is always cold here, even in this heat, and the waves are big and the undertow strong at the river mouth. We stand up to our knees watching walls of aqua blue swell up before us, golden sunlight dappling across the crest before they crash down and drench us to our chins in pure white foam.

I am already thinking about dinner and at mid-afternoon we head home. Pete has a projection shift at the local cinema so we’re having a late lunch / early dinner. I dump the wet towels on the porch, strip out of my bathers and head straight to the fridge for a cold cider to keep me company while I cook: stir fried chicken with heaps of fish sauce, sugar, Thai basil and mountains of fresh red chili in a coconut milk sauce. It’s so simple and so good: quick, clean, hot Thai food. Sweet and salty. Sweat drips from Pete’s forehead and I am nearly knocked sideways with sunshine, cider and chili.

After dinner, Pete heads off to work and the kids and I head back down to the river. The light now is pure gold and a glorious haze has settled over the beach. I’m sitting on the sand with my notebook while my two small ones dance in the river and make friends with the kids who have come to holiday in this incredibly beautiful place I now call home. I guess we’ll head back to the house at some point. The night will be a scorcher and sleep won’t come quickly. Pete will work late and I will wait for him, just like I did 20 years ago when at 17 I found myself a 26 year old projectionist. Then, he worked in a big Melbourne cinema, now he’s working summer holidays at a small seaside movie house. If I could have imagined so distant a future back then, I could not possibly have imagined a life better than this.

Chicken with Thai basil and red chili

• 2 Chicken breasts, thinly sliced
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped or finely sliced
• couple of handfuls of green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
• couple of handfuls of snow peas, trimmed
• 1 tablespoon canola, peanut or vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• 2 red chilies, minced
• Cup of finely sliced Thai  Basil (Apollo Bay locals, I got this from the egg man!)
• 1 cup of coconut milk
• Steamed rice, to serve.

Heat the oil in a hot wok and add the chicken, garlic and vegetables. Toss until the chicken has sealed, making sure to keep it moving quickly so it doesn’t stew. Then add the fish sauce, sugar and basil. Toss for a few seconds before adding the coconut milk. Toss until the coconut milk boils. At this point, serve out for your kids if (like mine) they don’t do chili, then add the chili, heating it through briefly until ready to serve. Serve with steamed rice.       

I contend that the pig is the unluckiest creature on the planet. Cursed by skin that bursts into crispy deliciousness at the slightest provocation, plagued by a creamy layer of fat, tormented by a sweet and unctuous flesh that can take you on a textural journey from snack-like crispiness to molten liquidity. Serve pork prepared in 5 different ways on the same plate and you would marvel at its diversity. This highly intelligent and charming animal seems to be an evolutionary experiment in deliciousness.  More vegetarians (apocryphally) fall off the wagon for bacon than any other product.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I am a heathen unbeliever, pigs would offer the most compelling argument against both Judaism and Islam. In Bali a form of Hinduism is practiced that (mercifully) does not prohibit the killing and eating of animals. When in Bali, look for warung or food stores that promote guling (pig) as this is used to advertise this as a business run by local Balinese people, not by halal Indonesians from Java. It’s a way of saying “buy local”. At Ibu Oka in Ubud you will be driven to present an offering at one of the ubiquitous Balinese shrines in thanks to the Hindu pantheon for allowing these people to eat flesh. Ibu Oka offers two dishes: babi guling and babi guling with rice. It is best to wait until you see the man coming down the street bearing the whole roasted suckling pig on his shoulder.Fresh off the coals, smothered in spices, carved up in front of your eyes and delivered to your table in baskets. You will believe that a better meal is simply not possible. And if you don’t believe me, believe Anothony Bourdain.

I will attempt Babi Guling one day. Even as I write this post my brain is compiling a logistical checklist. But there are many other blissful and achievable things a home cook can do with pork. A simple Chinese style sparerib is always a winner. I like to make mine with the full, thick rasher-style ribs boiled first and then marinated in Hoisin, ginger, sugar and all the usual suspects before throwing them in the oven until dark and sticky. A Chinese style crispy pork is also easily manageable at home and is almost foolproof provided you score and salt the skin well and start the thing off in a blisteringly hot oven to get the skin pumping. And then of course there is porchetta to which thoughts naturally return as the festive season approaches.

Yesterday I tried something new: pulled pork. The pork shoulder was marinated overnight in citrus juice and rind, honey and ground fennel and then placed in a slow cooker for 7 hours. I am not a fan of slow cookers and they way in which they completely fail to caramelise things. I also don’t like the fact that the slow cookers have no intrinsic flavour that they impart to a dish in the way that a well used claypot or casserole does. You can taste the lack of history in slow-cooker food. For the pulled pork, however, the slow cooker seemed right. When I gently prodded the shoulder after a day’s cooking it immediately fell apart and the “pulling” (shredding it with the fork) was more a suggestion than an action. The pork was piled into tortillas with julienned green apple and creme fraiche. Sweet and savoury, soft and sexy, the richness of the pork perfectly offset by the fresh apple, it was pretty much perfect. You could make a huge batch of it for a party and not worry about serving anything else. When I finish this post I will be piling the leftovers on a plate with a poached egg, fresh coriander and a good splash of Tabasco.

Pulled pork

• 2 kg pork shoulder, skin removed but fat left on
• 2 tablespoons of honey, warmed until runny
• Juice of two oranges
• Juice of one lemon
• 4 strips orange peel, no pith
• 2 strips lemon peel, no pith
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tablespoon of finely ground fennel seeds
• 5 sprigs of fresh thyme

Mix the marinade ingredients together. Line a bowl big enough to hold the shoulder with a plastic freezer bag and place the pork inside. Pour the marinade over and rub in well. Force all the air out of the bag and tie tightly. Leave to sit overnight. The following day, cook in a slow cooker or low oven for several hours until the meat starts to fall apart. Remove to a large bowl, pouring the cooking juices over the meat. When the meat is cool enough to handle, shred it with a fork. You may want to add some salt at this point. There are all sorts of ways you could serve this, I piled it into tortillas with shredded green apple and creme fraiche.

I have a deep admiration of women who are comfortable in their own bodies. I have never been. Self-Esteem and Ego have been slugging it out for as long as I can remember. Always a pointless and exhausting state of affairs, having children caused the whole thing to spiral out of control. My pelvic bones spread (as I suppose happens when you force a child through them), my rib cage was pushed up and out to make room, my breasts turned into behemoths and stayed that way, never to experience the post breastfeeding shrinkage I was promised. Then of course came the exhaustion and the sugar hits and the quick meals and finishing whatever the kids left on their plates and the absolutely no time or energy to do anything for myself. Size 12 became a size 14, 14 started to trend towards 16. Things were looking grim. Self-Esteem was waging a highly successful guerrilla campaign that was destroying my self-confidence, Ego was busily placating me with self-righteousness and lollies.

But across the border, in a more distant part of my psyche, a third party had been planning a campaign to take control of my body. Reason had for some time been amassing notes and now it had compiled a complete dossier. The notes concerned the many health risks associated with being overweight: heart disease, stroke, a wide variety of cancers, Alzheimers, Diabetes and other delights. It attached these notes to pictures of my children and reminded me of a good friend from Primary School whose mum had dropped dead of a heart attack in front of her. Not yet a teenager, she’d had to go live with the father from whom she had long been estranged. Reason also reminded me that the greatest indicator of obesity in children is having obese parents. Reason had of course attempted sorties previously but with limited troops behind it had quickly been pushed aside by far more experienced adversaries.

Suddenly and unexpectedly Reason found an Army. My mind had been taking more notice of Reason since a First Aid Course had put the fear into me about what I was doing to myself. It was with wonderful timing, then, that I came across my masseur down the street. He was looking great and I told him so. He told me about a diet that he and his naturopath wife had been on and Reason seized advantage. Now is the time, it said, and immediately booked an appointment. In no time at all, Reason had assembled an army and crossed the Rubicon. No turning back, in 3 short weeks it has shaved close to 7kgs off the territory previously held by Self-Esteem and Ego. An extreme diet, 500 calories a day from extremely limited food groups for 23 days. There have been civilian casualties: my poor husband and children who have borne the brunt of my out of control rage, my ability to speak in properly formed sentences and my singing voice. But it will be over soon. When I finish this phase, I spend another 23 days on a normal calorie intake but free from carbs and sugar to stabilise my weight. I am dreaming of scrambled eggs, bacon and avocado. There will be spoils of war, however. I plan to write an eBook of very low calorie recipes because, despite the battle raging around me, I have still managed to eat really delicious food. Here’s a taste.

Chinese – style chicken, tomato and chilli soup

This is a really satisfying and delicious soup and so very simple to make. I suspect it will become standard repertoire for me. In case you’re interested, it contains about 170 calories. 

• 100 gm chicken breast
• 2-3 cups fat free Asian-style chicken stock (see below)
• 1 tablespoon julienned ginger
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 300 gms tomatoes, each tomato cut into about 8 pieces
• 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh coriander
• Dried chili flakes

Place the chicken breast in a pan with the stock, ginger and garlic. Bring gently to the boil and then remove from the heat for about 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and shred finely. Return the pan to the heat, return to the boil and again remove the pan from heat. Add the chicken, soy sauce, coriander and tomatoes.  Sprinkle with chili flakes to taste.

To make the Chicken stock, trim the fat off some chicken chops and throw them in a stock pot with a stack of slices of fresh ginger, a couple of roughly chopped onions, some crushed garlic and about 6 peppercorns. Don’t be exacting about quantities, just make us much as you like. Bring gently to the boil and let simmer for 2 hours. Strain the stock and place the liquid in the fridge. As it cools, the fat will float to the surface and be easy to scrape off.

And so I bake up a debacle. Last time it was butterfly cakes. It seemed like a good idea – little wings of cake nestled in a pile of cream, glace cherry on top. Premium product, right? The cakes were fine. I was pleased with myself. They had chocolate chips. I had decided to use dairy whip instead of cream. I told myself that this was because it would save me time and mess but really I just wanted an excuse to hide behind the fridge door squirting tinned cream product down my throat. The cakes were duly creamed and taken to school. We literally live across the road from this marvellous institution but by the time the cakes had been delivered the “cream”, which is of course 99% air, had subsided and was flowing across the surface of the cakes in a greasy slurry. Cherries slumped forlornly on the plate. I placed my cakes on the communal table, comfortable in the company of a stack of nuggety offerings that had been crammed into old cereal boxes and strapped up with masking tape. The only person who purchased a fairy cake that day was The Child, bless him.

Scenario 2: I find out at the eleven and half-th hour that the kinder is having a working bee. A BBQ and beer  will be provided (yipee!) but a salad is requested. I never know what is happening at the kinder because my husband is the President of the Kinder Committee. This makes me assume that he will tell me the information I need to know in a timely and helpful fashion and so I don’t bother paying attention to anything the Kinder actually tells me. Therefore, between our mutual failures, I never know anything. But salads? Salads I can do, even at frighteningly late notice. Salads I understand. Salads I can not only happily provide but can actually use to impress and provide subtle indications that maybe, just maybe, I am one of the good mums. This lentil salad is a miracle of cooking, able to be conjured up out of next to nothing from stuff I nearly always have to hand, easy to prepare and so startlingly delicious that every time I make it I am inundated with requests for the recipe for weeks afterwards. Plus, despite being completely free of animal products, it has the remarkable quality of tasting like bacon.

Brown lentil salad

This recipe comes from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion where she describes it as a classic French dish. As such, it should ideally be made with Puy lentils (and they are much better, being nuttier in both texture and flavour). You can now get Puy lentils from major supermarkets but the readily available green or brown lentils (just different names for the same thing) are just fine and I use them 99% of the time. The trick is in the soaking time – they need 2 hours. Less than that and the skins won’t soften, more than that and the salad goes soggy. It is very important to soften the skins so that when salt is added at the beginning of the cooking time, they don’t toughen.

• 375g brown lentils
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
• 1 tbsp red-wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (extra)
• Black pepper

Wash the lentils and soak them in plenty of water for 2 hours. Before you drain the water off, reserve a cup of the water – you will need it for cooking. Heat the oil over a moderate heat in a heavy based pan (not non-stick!). I use an enamelled cast iron frying pan and it’s perfect for the job. Add the onions and fry gently until golden. This may take several minutes. Add the garlic and continue to fry for 1 minute. Then add the lentils, reserved soaking water (or tap water, if you forgot) and salt. Cook the lentils for about 25 minutes until the water has evaporated and the lentils are cooked. If the water evaporates too quickly, turn down the heat and add a little more. Don’t let them get mushy – they should still be a bit crunchy. Tip the lentils out of the pan into a bowl and stir in the the remaining ingredients. It’s best to do this while the lentils are still warm to take the edge off the vinegar and allow the flavours to infuse.

We turned in early every night and woke each morning to the kind of hard frosts you simply never see near the coast. Frosts that blanketed the ground and evaporated off in massive drifts when the sun finally made it over the ranges. Clouds drifted through the valley every morning and for a week we experienced nothing but perfect Spring weather. We took the kids tobogganing at Mt Hotham, walked Mt Buffalo in the winter sunshine like we were the only people there and quaffed gin and tonics at the end of every day. We had dinner at the Mountain View Hotel / Wandi Pub – a lovely long, low wooden building with deep eaves and wooden tables out the front. The people were friendly, the collection of historical photos on the walls outstanding and the Chicken Parmas more than adequate.

We were happy. The kids were happy and the things that made them happiest were the experiences they had of doing things for themselves. For my seven year old son that was making and maintaining his own small fire, which he did seriously and with great dedication, analysing and sorting through the different techniques of his mother, father and grandfather. Another highlight for both the kids was the visit to the Harrietville Trout Farm where they were beside themselves with delight at their ability to simply pull fish out of the ponds all on their own without adult help. A true delight to see my tiny 4 year old daughter haul a trout out of the water with a long bamboo stick, smiles like sunshine across her face. By the time they had enjoyed themsleves sufficiently we had more than we could cook and eat on Alex’s beloved cooking fires.

So I suggested to dad that we should try smoking the extras, something I had done before with mackerel, oolong tea and a wok. Dad had in fact made the long trip from Apollo Bay to Wandiligong with a wok, a gas burner and a the ever-present desire to undertake a project. This technique is primarily his. We used a pre-packaged woodchip product precisely designed for smoking. Personally, I believe that the oregano and thyme “flavour” of these chips imparted a slightly synthetic flavour to the smoke. Next time I would like to use a mild, natural woodchip. The woodchips were wrapped in a foil parcel with a hole for the smoke to escape from. The parcel was placed on the base of the wok with the hole pointing up and the fish was laid on a piece of chicken wire that dad hooked around the edge of the wok. The whole rig was then covered up with foil. We tried two ways – one with the fish butterflied and the other just placed in whole. The whole fish took around half an hour and turned out the more moist of the two. It was trial and error and will take a few more attempts yet to get the timing and temperature right – I guess we’ll just have to go back and try again. We ate it the following day in soft white rolls with aioli, finely chopped chives and rocket. Simple.

Which brings me to his Nasty Bits, which is now right up there with other favourite essay collections by viciously clever men such as David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Martin Amis’ The Moronic Inferno. Among numerous hilarious, angry and insightful essays there is one so far that really touched a nerve: “Are you a Crip or a Blood?”. Bourdain’s Crips and Bloods are actually drawn from yet another novel (excuse me while this post is sucked up into a sphincter of post-modernist referentialism), Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park. Crips are insane, driven seekers of the culinary ‘other’ who will go to considerable lengths to obtain the newest, the best, the most exotic of ingredients. The Bloods are the purists, the locavores. I’m mostly a Blood – it’s just that I was born in the wrong country.

I love to immerse myself in the immediate and local because it is real and meaningful, but quietly my inner Crip is yearning for bizarre ingredients I don’t quite understand from Asian wet-markets. Problematically for my inner locavore the food I really love, my soul food, the food that I am (no false modesty here) absolutely completely smoking hot at cooking, is all Asian. Problematically for my inner locavore I find most of the so-called great cuisines that would suit readily available produce (say, French and Italian) to be comparatively unsubtle and largely over-rated. Problematically for my inner locavore I live on just about the southern most tip of the Australian mainland, remote and hemmed in by raging oceans and cool-temperate rain forests.

And so I too have returned to study. My Crip is learning to find expression within these limitations without resorting to that appalling bastardisation which is “fusion food”. It is planning to build a hothouse and grow turmeric and galangal, imagining spots to plant the lemongrass and kaffir lime, cooking with native sand crabs. Meanwhile, my Blood is learning to produce good food with local, seasonal ingredients that I enjoy eating and challenging itself with the weekly mixed box delivery from Birregurra Organics. I’m far more interested in what the Crip is doing, but right now I have to admit that it’s the Blood that’s keeping the family in food. Let’s just say I’m work-shopping some pieces right now: this recipe for honey-roast pumpkin lasagna is one of them.

Honey-roast pumpkin lasagna

• 1 whole butternut pumpkin, peeled, seeded and cut into approx 3cm cubes
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 generous tablespoon of honey
• a few fresh sage leaves
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• 500g firm ricotta
• About 3/4 cup shaved Parmesan cheese
• 1 lightly beaten egg
• Fresh or dry lasagna sheets. If using the dry sheets, soak them in water for a a few minutes before use
• 1/2 cup walnuts

Place the pumpkin on a large piece of foil and toss with the garlic cloves (peeled or unpeeled), olive oil, salt and pepper and sage. Drizzle with honey and wrap in foil. Roast at about 200C for 15 mins and then open up the foil and roast for another 10 minutes until tender. Meanwhile mix the ricotta, the egg and half a cup of the Parmesan. When the pumpkin is cooked, mash, blend or puree it until smooth. Take a small baking tin or dish – shallow and long is better than short and deep and lightly grease it with olive oil. Add a layer of sheets, half the pumpkin, a third of the ricotta and then another layer of pasta. Repeat. Cover the top layer of pasta with the remaining ricotta mix and sprinkle the surface with the roughly chopped walnuts and the remaining Parmesan cheese. Cover with foil and cook for about 45 minutes, taking the foil off for the last 20 minutes. If you’ve used dry pasta, it won’t be ready until it’s tender enough to slip a knife through.

The crowd and vibe were great at the market today – I think a lot of people came to see Mama Maria’s cooking demonstration (there is bottle of her tomato sauce in mum’s cupboard, supplies for our upcoming high country holiday) and it was great to see so many people there. As always, though, I was surprised by the people who weren’t there. I know how life gets in the way of things but there are so many reasons to make the effort and get down and support the Market. A Farmers’ Market is designed to support local producers supply to their local community. There are a raft of environmental reasons as to why this is a good thing, food miles being the most obvious, but while I passionately support these reasons they are not my primary motivation.

Apollo Bay is a disadvantaged community. The average wage in this town is much, much lower than the statewide average but the cost of groceries is amongst the highest in the state. A low income family in this town (and this is probably most of us) spend 38% of their weekly income on basic groceries. This is off peak: in the tourist season food prices rise even higher. Economic opportunities are limited. Many of us work in service where the average hourly wage is around $21.00 an hour. Work is typically casual and highly seasonal. As agriculture, fishing and other traditional local industries decline we are increasingly dependent on a fickle tourist economy.

I support the Farmers’ Market because I support locals spending money within the local economy. The average spend per head at a Victorian Farmers’ Market is apparently around $75. Imagine if the Farmers’ Market became big enough that once a month you could do all your fresh grocery shopping there. Imagine if you could buy locally made bread, milk and butter from a local micro-dairy, fresh organic fruit and veggies and locally ranged and processed meat. If 200 people spent $75 at the market that would be $15,000 dollars circulating through our local economy once a month. I know that some people are concerned that there is not enough “local content” yet at our Market. If you have this concern then go into your back garden and plant out a bed of lettuces or garlic or tomatoes and come and sell them to the rest of us. Help the Farmers’ Market reach the accreditation requirement of 75% local produce that it working so very, very hard to reach – they cannot produce stalls out of thin air, they need people to step up. Or just go there now and spend some money to invest in the future. It needs to be supported whilst young, like all young things it will need help to grow. Imagine if we all got behind it. It would be a hub of locals supporting locals, growing local, eating local, spending local. How could you not want that?

The Apollo Bay Farmers Market is held on every third Sunday at the Apollo Bay Youth Club in Moore Street. Support them by going and telling your friends and family to go. Spend some money – even just a bit. Like them on facebook.Share this post with your friends and ask them to share it with their friends. Spread the word and may we all be better for it.

But now, man, we live in the regions. We’re so tough that we can’t even get to a decent espresso and have to make it ourselves with the dual valve Bialetti Brika ordered over the Internet from “town”. We weren’t even on ADSL 2 at the time. We’re so tough we’ve had to install apps on our iPhones to ensure survival under emergency circumstances – a knot tying guide, a torch, astronomical software in case life-saving celestial navigation is required. I imagine that we are going to need these apps when we start practicing genuine local food procurement. Pete’s really going to need google maps and a compass if he’s ever cruising the wilds of the Otways in a deer stalker stalking deer.

Those of you still living in the city can’t even imagine the kind of tough, ruggedy choices we face. Last week at the pier, my brother and his wife seriously had to consider who has going to hold the iPhones and who was going to ruin their clothes leaping in after the children when they leaned out just a little too far looking for fish. And they’re not nearly as tough as us (sorry, guys). Their clothes are much nicer, though. Pete, the kids and I were back there today for a fishing trip. Fishing is a frightfully tough thing to do and because we’re so tough and the animal kingdom responds to to our alpha-species domination vibes, we actually caught four fish. Two bream and a mullet. All undersized and had to be thrown back. We (well, I) also reeled in a large and frighteningly ugly spiny death fish that unhooked itself at precisely the moment we were starting to really panic about what to do with it. Good sport, no food in it. Just as well I’d dropped into the fishing co-op before hand to pick up some fish for the lovely and delicate steamed fish cakes I made for dinner.

Steamed coriander fish cakes (serves 4)

• 750g firm fleshed white fish, roughly minced in a food processor
• 1 lightly beaten egg
• 1/4 of a cup of very finely sliced spring onions
• 1 small carrot, shaved with a vegetable peeler, shavings finely sliced
• 1/2 cup finely sliced coriander stems (leaves would be OK)
• 1 tsp minced ginger
• 1 tsp white sugar
• 1 tsp oyster sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 tbsp sherry or Chinese cooking wine
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 bunch bok choy
• 1 small leek

You’ll need to start by making some decisions based on your steaming capabilities -the fish cakes will be laid on plates and steamed like at yum cha so you will need to set up a plate or series of plates to sit inside whatever steamer/s you have available. The recipe makes about 18 cakes. I place a rack inside my wok so I needed three plates. Rinse the bok choy and cut the leaves off the base. Cover your plates with the leaves and very finely sliced leeks. To make the fish cakes, simply mix all the remaining ingredients together in a bowl. If you’re worried about the fish cakes binding properly, you could mix a little bit of cornflour through the soy sauce before you add it to the mix. I didn’t do this and it was not a problem. Take a 1/4 cup of the mix and press it into a flat cake and lay them on top of the vegetables. Repeat (obviously, I hope). Place them in the steamer and cook for 5 -6 minutes. Serve with rice and plenty of fresh coriander.

Apparently simple and straightforward things (like mayonnaise) are often difficult to make, require real precision and understanding of what’s going on and a fair bit of trial and error. The simpler the dish the harder it is to conceal your mistakes. If you don’t understand the chemistry of the process (a knowledge which most home cooks only acquire gradually over a number of years) then you probably won’t be able to fix it if it goes off – course. Then there is the fact that most cooks have a style that they really understand and are comfortable with and some additional things that they just don’t get. With me, Italian food and doughs of all sorts fall into the latter category.

So you can probably understand why gnocchi has never been my forte. I have tried to make it at home but it has always been jaw-breakingly  tough and awful. Plus, it is time – consuming and fiddly when compared to buying the pre-made stuff. I persist, however, because there is simply no comparison between well made gnocchi and the pre-made product. And so it came to pass that I had a heap of old potatoes from Birregurra Organics that needed to be dealt with or be wasted. Gnocchi apparently needs to be made from old potatoes (something about the quality of the starch, I think) and I had a feeling deep inside that this time it was going to go well. And indeed it did. I did a lot of research and a bit of meditation (seriously) and entered the zone of marvellous gnocchi. The recipe below is what I did and I hope it will work for you as well as it did for me. There are a couple of tips and tricks in the method, the main one being to work gently and deftly. The amount made fed 2 people and I froze it after making. I chose to serve it tossed in olive oil and lemon zest and topped it with fried haloumi. I feel a little ashamed of the outrageousness of this but the soft, salty bliss was indescribable….

Baked potato gnocchi

• 400g baked potatoes

• some plain flour – start with half a cup – you may need more

• Beaten egg yolk.

Lets start with the potatoes. You need 400g of potato – this is the weight after it has been baked and removed from the skins. I would guess this is about 6 medium to large sized potatoes. Cut the potatoes in half and bake in a medium to hot oven until tender. This was the Eureka moment for me. I think that baking keeps the potatoes very dry which is one of the keys to successful gnocchi. Remove from the oven and allow to cool fully before scraping out the flesh. Pass the potato flesh through a fine sieve – this is very important if you want to get a nice, light texture so please, please, please don’t skip this step. Add the beaten egg yolk and gradually start working in the flour and kneading it gently on a well floured surface. Add flour until the dough is be soft and pliable. Don’t be tempted to add too much – when you are concerned that its still a little bit too sticky, its probably ready. Take small handfuls of the dough and roll it into logs of about 2cm in diameter. Keep sprinkling flour on or it may become too sticky to handle. Cut into pieces about 2cm long and make a thumb mark in the centre to hold the sauce. Place on a floured tray and use immediately or freeze. If you are going to freeze the gnocchi, place them on the tray in the freezer until they are totally solid before transferring them into a container or they will stick together and become a sludgy mess when you cook them. To cook the gnocchi, drop them into lightly salted boiling water. When they rise to the surface they are ready.

Baroque was originally (an often still is) used as a pejorative term to describe something that is overly flamboyant, excessive or highly ornamented.  I have had a culinary Baroque – anyone with enough time on their hands and a love of cooking probably has. It reached it’s peak around 10 years ago before being replaced with the Abstract Expressionism of parenthood. It entailed the construction of overly complex or otherwise excessive dishes: consommes nail-bitingly clarified with egg-whites, fiendishly complex curries, peking duck, vitello tonnato etc. Entire weekends would pass in the ongoing consumption of incredible food and assorted social lubricants. Laughter and hangovers were both abundant. On one memorable occassion we accidentally invited a couple of vegetarians to a kangaroo and beef themed Sunday lunch. At a friend’s dinner party the 14th and final course was a huge slab of Jindi Triple Brie which caused (and I kid you not)  30% of the substantial party present to, shall we say “retire” from the event. Now might be a good time to look at another work of Baroque art, Caravaggio’s David and Goliath.

This Winter Pear Flan is the sweet flowering of my personal baroque. It is an original recipe and I am, to be honest, very proud of it. I’m not going to lie and tell you how easy it is to make. It has a lot of components and each one has it’s own complexities and difficulties. You have to really pay attention. You have to get a lot of dishes dirty. And you will get very, very sticky. But I’m telling you, the combination of cloves and creme patissiere, the pears heady with bay and star anise and lightly glossy with a touch of honey,  the super short pastry crust – well, I’ll leave it your imagination. This is a dish to be used unwisely. Baroque, incidentally, means “a rough or imperfect pearl”. A perfect description of this dish.

Winter pear flan

For the pears:

• 6 pears, peeled and halved length ways. Choose pears that are only just under-ripe
• 4 cups of water
• 2 cups red wine
• 3 cups caster sugar
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 cardamon pods
• 2 star anise
• 10 whole cloves
• 6 peppercorns
• 1 cinnamon stick
• Piece of orange peel
• 1-2 tbsps LIGHTLY flavoured honey (omit this step if you only have a heavily flavoured honey available)

Bring all the ingredients apart from the pears and honey gently to a boil, stirring often so that the sugar doesn’t stick. Add pears to the syrup and keep the liquid to a gentle simmer. Poach until the pears are just soft. Gently remove the pears and boil the remaining syrup for around 20 mins to reduce it. Add the honey (don’t be tempted to use too much), remove from heat and stir until dissolved. Return pears to the syrup and set aside. Now it’s time to move on to the pastry.

For the pastry (do NOT use pre-prepared shortcrust for this, it would be a crime against the flan)

• 180g of unsalted butter
• 240 g of plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 3 tablespoons of water

Take the butter from the fridge half an hour before starting. Sieve your flours and salt straight onto a lightly floured surface. Cut the butter into little pieces and rub into the flour to partly combine it. Make a well in the centre and add the water. Quickly work the mixture with pastry scrapers (I don’t have these so I use a cake server and a metal egg flip – classy!) and work into a rough heap of buttery lumps of dough. Stephanie Alexander says to be mindful of cement mixing techniques, if this helps. Then, very quickly use the palm of your hand to smear the pastry away from you across the workbench. It will combine lightly and be very fragile and dry. This is what you want. Gather it together, dust in flour, wrap in gladwrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour. The secret of shortcrust is to work it as little as possible and keep it cold so that the butter doesn’t over-combine with the flour. It will help to chill your bench down with ice packs beforehand if your workspace is too hot. Then move on to the creme patissiere.

For the Creme Patissiere

• 2 cups of milk
• 6 egg yolks
• 50g cornflour
• 175g caster sugar
• 1 vanilla bean, spilt
• 1/2 cup of thickened cream
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves

Place the vanilla bean in the milk and bring it just up to boiling point before removing it from the heat. Whisk the yolks, egg, cornflour and sugar together until thick. Slowly pour the milk on and stir. Transfer the mixture to a clean pan, bringing slowly to the boil and stirring until thick. Beat vigorously for one minute until smooth and then pass through a sieve. Discard the vanilla bean. Press glad wrap down onto the surface until ready to use. Before use stir through the thickened cream.

And finally…

Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and and line a flan tin with pastry. Place in the freezer for 20 minute and then cover the pastry in foil or baking paper weighed down with dried beans. Bake for 15 minutes, remove the paper and beans and bake for another 5 minutes until lightly golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool. When cooled spread with pastry cream and sprinkle with ground cloves. Remove the pears from the syrup and arrange in circles on the flan, decorate with the bay leaves, anise and some freshly zested orange. Chill before serving. Aaaaaahhhh. I’m exhausted……