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 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.

One of our favourite weekend meals is chicken wontons. Tragically, you have to drive at least an hour from Apollo Bay to obtain wonton skins so I tend to get lots at a time.  I always intend to make enough to freeze some down – if you’ve got homemade stock and wontons in your freezer then you have instant wonton soup for dinner. Hooray! In reality, however,we usually eat as many as we cook. The wonton experience works like this – bowls of rice and bottles of soy sauce and black rice vinegar are placed on the table. The wontons are ferried from the kitchen and devoured in approximately the same amount of time it takes another batch to cook. It tends to become carnage; sweet, delicious carnage. In some ways, this is like yum cha.

Look, these dumplings aren’t particularly special but they are real crowd pleasers. The kids adore them and they make a really fun family meal. I strongly recommend getting some black rice vinegar for serving -its easily obtainable from Asian grocers. Use like soy sauce. Some notes on this recipe – I have no idea what kind of quantities I use, I make these very much on spec. So these amounts are a bit of a guess and you’ll have to experiment. There are a number of ways to cook them, which I’ll explain below.

Chicken wontons

• 40- 60 wonton or gow gee skins
• 500g chicken mince
• good teaspoon of minced ginger
• clove of garlic, minced
• tablespoon of finely minced spring onion
• scant tablespoon finely chopped coriander leaf and stem
• teaspoon of sugar
• splash of chinese rice wine or dry sherry
• teaspoon of light soy sauce
• teaspoon of oyster sauce

Mix the filling ingredients by hand until well blended. Each wonton skin will take about 1.5  – 2 teaspoons of filling. I have NO idea to describe the wonton rolling action but it doesn’t really matter -just as long as they are well sealed. I shape them with a flat base like a gyoza because I like to pan fry them.

Once the wonton are rolled, you can do a number of things with them. You can drop them straight into a gently simmering Asian style broth and cook for around 5 minutes to have wonton soup. You can steam them, or poach them in boiling water. I like to lightly oil a non stick pan, place the wontons on the pan so they start to fry lightly on the bottom. I then pour a small amount of water into the pan and cover it with a lid. The steam cooks the wontons but they get also get a nice crispy base. These wontons freeze very well but I do find that frozen wontons are best used for wonton soup. If doing this, do not defrost the wontons first but drop them into the stock while still frozen.

My dad and I learnt this recipe at a cooking class we took at Laka Leke. It’s a great addition to a special banquet style dinner as you can prepare the chicken and dressing in advance and toss them together just before serving. If you can’t get the fresh tumeric (promise me you’ll try), you can substitute 1 tsp of powdered tumeric and half a teaspoon of saffron. To toast the shrimp paste, wrap it in a single layer of foil and dry toast in a hot pan until you can’t stand the stink any longer, then pound it into a fine powder .

Ayam Panggang Sambal Matah (Balinese Chicken Salad)

• 2oo gm chicken breasts
• thumb sized piece of fresh tumeric, finely grated
• 1 tablespoon coriander seed, toasted and ground
• Salt and white pepper
• 6 tablespoons light olive oil (or other lightly flavoured salad oil)
• 4 shallots, peeled and finely sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic (peeled and finely sliced)
• Half a teaspoon of toasted shrimp paste, ground to a powder
• Juice of one lime
• Inner white part of a stem of lemongrass finely chopped
• Finely sliced hot red chillies to taste

Place the chicken between two sheets of cling film and pound flat with a rolling pin. They need to cook quickly or the marinade will blacken so you want them not more than a centimetre thick. Combine the grated tumeric, ground coriander, salt and pepper and three tablespoons of the oil and coat the chicken. Marinate for 1 hour and then grill or BBQ the chicken and leave to cool. Combine the remaining oil and ingredients to make the salad dressing. When the chicken is cool, shred it with your fingers and then toss it together with the salad dressing. I like to serve it piled high on a plate garnished with extra chili, finely sliced kaffir lime leaves and some grated kaffir lime rind.

Having said that, I do have to tell you about this one particular produce moment.  Many years ago we spent a not so small fortune on an organically fed free range chicken from some guy’s back yard. It was a size 25, the colour of apricots and had a layer of fat as thick as my finger under the skin. I stuffed it full of orange quarters, fist-fulls of fresh tarragon and garlic cloves. I swear to god that the thing smelt like a pudding while it was cooking – just perfectly sweet and fragrant and the taste of the bird was utterly indescribable. I have not eaten chicken in a meaningful sense before or since this moment.

The produce problems of living in a small rural town would of course be considerably offset if I were a gardener. As much I would like to imagine myself flitting earthily around my fabulous garden plucking exotic mushrooms from the shadows and harvesting armloads of zucchini flowers, this really is another thing that just ain’t going to happen. Fortunately I do know a fair few gardeners who from time to time are generous enough to give us stuff. Recently one of Pete’s Kendo group dropped around some gorgeous white squash and a handful of fresh herbs. One of these herbs was an amazing little plant called Lemon Licorice Mint. I trust it’s flavour is self-explanatory. It’s an intriguing and really addictive combination of flavours. I cooked the squash with the herbs in our new-fangled recent addition, the “microwave”. A lovely partner to an orange and tarragon roast chicken.

Orange and tarragon roast chicken

I often find it hard to get fresh tarragon.It’s perfectly OK to just sprinkle the inside of the bird with some dry tarragon.

• 1 chicken – get the best quality you kind find and/or afford
• knob of butter
• 2 oranges.
• 6 cloves of garlic
• few sprigs of fresh tarragon
• approximately 1 tablespoon dried tarragon
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 220 Celsius (200 if your oven is either particularly hot or fan forced). Rinse your chicken and pat it dry. If using dry tarragon, sprinkle it inside the chicken now. Cut one of the oranges into quarters and stuff 2-3 of the pieces into the cavity, along with the garlic cloves and fresh tarragon, if using. Gently ease up the skin of the chicken where it separates from the breast and ease some butter between the skin and the flesh. This step is not strictly necessary and is probably quite inadvisable for health reasons,but it does make the breast meat richer and more moist.

Now give that chook a good rubbing down with the olive oil and the juice of the remaining orange quarter. Season liberally with salt and pepper and sprinkle with dried tarragon to taste. Place the chicken breast side up on a rack (if you have one)  in a roasting pan and place in the oven. Roast for 20 minutes and then remove from the oven and turn breast side down. Squeeze with juice from the extra orange and baste with any pan juices. Return to oven. Roast for 20 minutes, remove and turn breast side up, basting again with pan and orange juices. Roast for another 20 – 30 minutes (until juices run clear),basting every 10 minutes. Let the chicken rest for 10-15 minutes out of the oven before carving.

You can do a standard roast dinner with this. It makes a lovely gravy if you roast some garlic cloves in the pan and push the mushy insides into the gravy. I, however, especially like this chicken with a simple green salad, some crusty bread and maybe one vegie dish, such as:

Vanessa’s squash

• 4 large or 8 small squash (or replace with zucchini)
• Fresh minced herbs (I used lemon licorice mint and lemon verbena)
• Black pepper
• Splash of water

Slice the squash and place in a microwave safe dish. Gently toss through the herbs and pepper and add a splash of water. Cover with plastic wrap. I have no idea how to give microwave cooking instructions for truly they are the work of the devil but I’m guessing I did 2-3 minutes on high and then let them stand for another minute or two before removing the plastic wrap.

We used to go there when Pete was working as a projectionist at a City cinema. We went there when we were both working for a law firm. I went there with a colleague, fresh from excavating at the Old Melbourne Gaol and covered in filth. Nam Loong at one time fed our working lives and there were many delights to choose from which used to give you great change from 10 dollars. They make my favourite char sui bau and the best Singapore noodles. They can provide you with a plate of roast duck on rice for the kind of change you can find in your couch. But the dish that I find it almost impossible to go past is the Salted Chicken. This is a gently poached white cooked chicken with a spring onion and ginger sauce. Its a standard Chinese classic with many minor variations however I have cobbled together a recipe which replicates the Nam Loong Salted Chicken experience at home.

If you eat regularly at my house you will have had salted chicken. If you are invited for a meal at short notice there is a 50/50 chance it will be salted chicken. If you want to call me and invite yourself over for a salted chicken you can almost bet I’ll say yes. It is one of my kitchen standards. It is ridiculously simple to make but you must,must,must follow 2 rules:

1. DO NOT boil the chicken. Do not even think about boiling the chicken.If you do boil the chicken give yourself a good spanking and abandon the salted chicken and use the poor bird for something else. For those uninitiated in the process of poaching a whole chicken, do not let your fear of the method get the better of you. It wants to cook by basically sitting in a hot bath and you need to let it.
2. DO NOT use a blender to make the sauce. This gives it an unpleasantly mucousy texture. Use the method described below. If you do not have a mortar and pestle, you simply put the sauce ingredients in a jar and mix by shaking.

Salted Chicken

• 1 free range /good quality chicken
• 2 spring onions for the stock
• 4 slices of fresh ginger for the stock
• tsp salt for the stock
• sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons very finely chopped spring onions for the sauce
• 1.5 tbsp grated ginger for the sauce
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil for the sauce
• 1.5 teaspoons salt for the sauce

Rinse and dry the chicken and place in a stock pot with cold water to cover. Add the two spring onions, 4 slices of ginger and salt. Bring almost up to the boil but do not let the water get so hot that the bubbles do anything more than just barely break the surface of the water. Simmer very gently like this for 10 minutes then put a lid on the pot and turn off the heat. Leave for 45 minutes and then very gently put the chicken in a bath of iced water for a minute or so (until the water starts to warm up). This does nice things to the fat under the skin. Remove the chicken and gently brush with sesame oil. Put in the fridge while you make the sauce.

To make the sauce, pound the spring onions and the ginger together with the salt with a mortar and pestle and then add the oil and mix to a paste. To serve, chop the chicken chinese style and arrange on a plate with the sauce in a separate dish on the side for dipping. Eat with rice.

I think this could be a great vegetarian dish if you replaced the chicken with deep fried cubes of  tofu. I omitted the chili (which the kids aren’t crazy for and which Pete and I don’t eat, other than on special occasions for traditional Chinese medicine reasons)- but it would definitely be even better with. I’ve cooked extra rice tonight and spread it out on a tray to dry in the fridge – fried rice tomorrow night.

And while I’m on the subject of Vietnamese food, if you haven’t had a look at Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam on SBS (Thursday 7.30),do so now! Last week he had a whole Mekong Delta fish, the scales of which puff up and turn crispy upon deep frying, drenched in a ginger sauce. Just totally sensational, really.

Stir-fried chicken with mango and cashews (Wendy Hutton, Green Mangoes and Lemongrass)

• 2 large firm ripe mangoes  – cheeks sliced off, scored diagonally into 1 cm wide slices and eased out of the skin.
• 3 tbs fish sauce, 1 tsp lime juice, 1 tsp sugar, half tsp salt, quarter tsp black pepper, mixed together until sugar and salt dissolved
• 250 ml vegetable oil
• 500g boneless chicken breast cut into 2cm squares (or replace with a block of firm tofu cut into cubes and fried until crispy)
• 2 tsp finely minced garlic
• 1 tsp finely minced large red chili
• 200g trimmed snow peas
• 1 medium ripe tomato
• Half a cup of dry roasted cashews

Heat the oil in wok until very hot. Cook half the chicken, stirring frequently for 2 minutes, remove with slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Repeat with remaining chicken. Take the wok off the heat and remove all but 3 tbs of oil. While the wok is off the heat, add the garlic and chili and stir fry for a couple of seconds. If you keep it off the heat, then you’re less likely to burn the garlic which will make the dish bitter. Return the wok to the heat and add the snow peas, stir fry for 1 minute. Return chicken and add fish sauce mixture. Mix well, then add mango, tomato and cashews. Stir gently until warmed through.