An intimate archaeology: Chicken curry

Posted on 25/06/2011 by libby

curry Somewhere, packed away in a cupboard, I have a box of letters and diaries from my child- and early adult- hood. Every time I move house they come with me. They contain things that are too painful to look at: acute reminders of the person I was, letters, mixed tapes and drawings from someone I loved who is now dead, mementos of joyful times I hardly remember. I only look at them sometimes, but will never discard them. I have a cookbook like this too, black bound A4 with a red – bound spine.  I started this cookbook nearly 20 years ago now when I began recording and developing recipes. The pages are falling out and it’s full of yellowing sticky tape. It’s a fragile artefact and every time I flick through it I am excavating my own past. Continue reading →

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It’s love: Roti

Posted on 04/06/2011 by libby

rotiThe world can be divided into two types of people. The first type wants to hold a gathering of family or friends with the least possible amount of work. Nobody is to be in any way inconvenienced by actual effort of any sort -  it needs to be easy. A tray of sausages, or a cold chook and some salad will do. For the second type this approach is an anathema, a barren wasteland empty of the truest of soul sisters: food and love. It will not surprise anyone to know that I am of the latter type. I cook as an expression of creativity and, most importantly, love. Friends and family are your heart and soul. They should be honoured with offerings, things you have pieced together in love with the express intention of bringing them pleasure. This is why I cook. It is my devotion. I learnt this from my Nana.

The cuisines I most like to cook for people are all Asian, specifically south east Asian, Indian and Chinese. I love these foods, they are my culinary heartland. I love the cunningness of Chinese cooking, the mad combinations, the double cooking, the peculiar textures. I love the delicacy and balance of south east Asian food, finding the perfect balance on a narrow flavour profile where the slightest mis-step is the difference between sublime and banal, or even downright awful. I love how food from this region is created from stinking, pungent, difficult ingredients and transformed into something beautiful and sophisticated. It’s like starting with Courtney Love and ending up with Audrey Hepburn. I love the huge variety of spices and methods in Indian food, the profound sense of satisfaction in creating a curry paste from scratch and the total sensual immersion required to cook it well. Continue reading →

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I got crabs, lah!

Posted on 10/05/2011 by libby

Long have I wanted to macrab 1ke Chili Crab, Singapore style (apologies to my Malaysian relatives if this should be Chili Crab, Malaysia Style – I’m sure the battle lines are drawn). Chili crab is a deep, intense and blisteringly insane experience. All that focused cracking, pulling and sucking, coming up occasionally for beer and / or tea,  shell fragments from one end of the table to the other, meat under your fingernails, burning lips etc. What greater offering could you make to those you love. Alas, it would seem no crabs are available for commercial purpose in these here parts. The love is not forthcoming. Continue reading →

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Yes, I’m cheap: Brown lentil soup

Posted on 27/04/2011 by libby

Not to toot my own horn olentil soupr anything, but there is absolutely nothing not to like about this soup. Unless you don’t like lentils and frankly, if you don’t like lentils I’m guessing you actually only think you don’t like lentils in which case you are sadly deluded and should make this soup anyway. What’s good about this soup? For a start, it’s stupidly easy to make. No skill required at all, the only slightly tricky bit is making sure you don’t sneak out too early and add the salt before the lentils are fully cooked. If you add the salt too soon the lentils won’t soften properly and you will surely regret your rash spontaneity.

Secondly, its insanely cheap to make. For many people who have managed to pull off a largely more mature adult lifestyle and possess such things as homes and proper cars this won’t matter much but for me, it’s really important. As a family comprising a self employed student and a community-sector worker, when the Dreaded Global Financial Crisis hit my first fear was that my family would be able to afford nothing other than bad white bread and cheap carbs. Then I remembered the brown lentil soup. And, yes, the Dreaded Global Financial Crisis did hit us hard and, yes, the brown lentil soup was with us and is with us still. If you make this from scratch it will probably put you about $10.00 out of pocket but I nearly always have some or all of the ingredients floating around. Its smell-of-an oily-rag health food. Yay for brown lentil soup! Continue reading →

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Easier than takeaway Part 2: Pear and parmesan salad

Posted on 25/04/2011 by libby

Despair, followed quickly bpear salady relief.  Having being told by well-meaning friends who did not know they were breaking my heart that Birregurra Organics was closing shop I went into a culinary tail-spin. No more Friday Surprise Box of gorgeous organic produce. I came to realise that I had come to a point where the thought of buying my fruit and veg from the local greengrocer was no longer an option. Never a person who required a firm grip on reality, I decided to pursue the following approach: deny, deny, deny! Miraculously, this appears to have borne fruit. Literally. The business is to be taken over by a couple in Lorne and deliveries will continue from May 6. I can breathe again.

Summer 2010 – 2011, in terms of weather, was a complete fizzer: grey, wet and cold and so there has been an absence of the usual signs that the season has turned. The strongest evidence for the arrival of autumn has come from what I have been producing from my Friday Surprise Box: maple-syrup roasted vegetables, soup made from honey roasted carrots etc. My must-have dish of the season though has undoubtedly been an incredibly simple salad made from rocket, pears, walnuts and Parmesan. These ingredients all have a deeply warming and sustaining nature and this dish is a reminder of the joys of cold-season salads when you tend to forget that it is still possible to “eat light”. In Chinese medicine, walnuts support the kidneys which is a fine thing in the cooler months.  Continue reading →

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Mellow fruitfulness: quince jam

Posted on 27/03/2011 by libby

Tonight there will be quince jamno cuteness, smarminess or attempts at humour. Tonight I am writing about quince. Quince is a mystery, a journey, the ultimate argument for the art of slow cooking. To cook with quince is to experience alchemy. Quinces, criminally, are not readily available and I suspect that many readers of this blog will never have cooked with them, possibly have never even seen one. Yet they grow abundantly in Victoria and are a common back yard tree. The tree is nothing special to look at, the fruit even less so: irregular, plutonium yellow green, covered in grayish fuzz. They are challenging to peel, difficult to cut and discolour quickly. But here’s what happens if you put them in sugar syrup and poach them gently: Continue reading →

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Green banana curry

Posted on 07/03/2011 by libby

Well this dish waBanana currys just a complete surprise really. I had some bananas from Birregurra Organics but despite all my best attempts at encouragement and tricks with paper bags the little buggers remained resolutely green and hard. But it was a kilo of fruit produced with love, dammit, and there was no way I was going to let them go without a battle. The first stop was to google “unripe banana recipes”. Wow. That took me places I never wanted to go… Eventually, however, I ended up on a Hare Krishna site. Now let it be said that I have two specific issues with Hare Krishna cooking. I’m sorry, but asafoetida is not an acceptable replacement for garlic and the fashion fails to meet even my exceptionally low standards. Continue reading →

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Too much Mediterranean culture is never enough

Posted on 23/02/2011 by libby

I have developed a whole new and dangerous habit. It may be the most dangerous eating discovery since my mum suggested putting slices of haloumi in the the toasted sandwich maker: strained Greek yoghurt. Youghurt, I hear you ask, what could possibly be so bad about yoghurt? I will tell you: in the last  5 days my family has purchased and eaten 1.5 kg of yoghurt. This approximately doubles the amount we would normally consume in an entire month. Now I haven’t looked at the nutritional data but from the smooth creamy way it slides down your throat I’ll take a wild punt and say it’s not exactly fat free. And what makes this normally mundane supermarket product so very special all of a sudden? I have started straining it. That’s all.  If you you plop your yoghurt into a fine sieve and suspend it over a bowl for at least 12 hours, the excess liquid gradually drains away and leaves you with a semi-solid yoghurty delight. It’s so simple I won’t  even provide a recipe (just remember to use a Greek style of yoghurt), I’ll  give you instead a travelogue of my last few days of immersion in Mediterranean culture.

Strained Greek yoghurt with banana, honey and cinnamon

On day one I used it as the basis for an embarrassingly simple yet incredibly tasty breakfast: one sliced beautiful banana from my weekly Birregurra Organics box, some lovely dollops of yoghurt, a drizzle of raw organic honey and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Just too easy, and I can’t even tell you how good it was followed by an especially good triple espresso from my beloved Bialetti Brikka (temperamental as a racehorse but when it’s having a good day you won’t get a better coffee anywhere, especially if it’s running Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, but that’s a whole other story…). Continue reading →

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Choc mint zucchini cake

Posted on 19/02/2011 by libby

zucchini cakeMy days as an idiot gardener appear to be numbered. Our little patch at the community garden is doing so well that people, actual gardening type people, are asking me what I’m doing. The answer is, of course, channeling the energy of the benevolent god of sheer dumb luck. My beans are doing beautifully – I will collect my second mini crop of them tomorrow for our Roast Chicken – and an apparently unheard of watermelon has made an appearance (how long it will last I do not know but for now it continues to grow). But I should clarify by saying that my most abundant crop has been zucchinis, that fail-safe friend of the idiot gardener. Continue reading →

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Going feral: Nasturtium salad with lemony chicken

Posted on 09/02/2011 by libby
Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums on the desk at work

There was something about my path through today that was just quite lovely, really. It began with a gorgeous walk to work and closed with a dinner inspired by weeds collected during a sunny afternoon with the Landcare Townies group. I walk to work along the edge of the floodplain of the Barham River. It’s a beautiful view out to the hills and over the ocean. Until recently there has been a small herd of silvery Brahman Cattle there, too. Doe-eyed, placid, pretty. On mornings like today I feel like I’ve been absorbed into the landscape before the day has even started. Continue reading →

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