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.

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.

Last weekend we took the kids fishing down at the pier. It may have been the crappy bait, it may have been their excited screams, it may have been our total lack of skill. Whatever. We got nothing. Walking back to the car we passed a large group of Chinese people fishing in an unusual spot and as we were heading over to check it out, a man reeled in a crab on his line.  It was just a smallie, a little native sand crab not more than 10cm across the shell. I took my son across to have a look and lo and behold, they lifted the lid off their bucket and it was chock full of sand crabs. Now they had little English and I have no Chinese but we knew enough for them to offer me a bag of crabs and for me to accept. And that’s all I needed to know.

The Australian Sand Crab. Yes, you can eat it and (even better) yes, you can apparently also catch them. I am now officially harbouring a fantasy of catching a mass of crabs and making Chili Crabs for all when the Apollo Bay Kendo Club hosts its inaugural seminar. They lived a little while in the fridge, squeaking and bubbling and waving their wee claws, before I popped them in the freezer for half an hour. Preparing and cleaning them was pretty intuitive after cleaving them down the middle. The yucky bits are obvious but you really have to get your fingers under the shells to clean them out. They don’t have much meat in them at all but what there is incredibly sweet and delicious and the shells are great to suck on. The recipe that I’m about to give you comes from Wendy Hutton’s Green Mangoes and Lemongrass and its a really, really great one. I have made some adaptations based on the availability of ingredients late on a Saturday night in Apollo Bay.  This was an amazing dish: hot, visceral, interactive and celebratory.  So here it is: Singapore style chili crab, lah!

Singapore chili crab

• About 1.5 kg live crabs (prepared as per the description of sand crabs above)
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 finely minced red onion
• 4 large red chilies, minced
• 2 tbsp finely minced ginger
• 6-8 large garlic cloves, minced
• 3.5 litres chicken stock
• 1/4 cup bottled chili sauce
• 1/2 cup bottled tomato sauce
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp Chinese rice wine
• 2 tsps salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp cornflour mixed with 3 tbsp water

Ginger Chilli Sauce

• 4 large red chilies, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp finely minced ginger
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp water

To make the chili-ginger sauce, blend all the ingredients in a small food processor or spice grinder and set aside.

Heat the oil in a wok or large saucepan (I used a large saucepan) and add onion, ginger, garlic and chilies. Keep moving  over a medium heat for 3 minutes or until fragrant. Add the Chili ginger sauce, stock, chili sauce, tomato sauce, sugar, rice wine, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and then drop back to a simmer for 10 minutes. Add the halved and cleaned sand crabs and cooked for about 5 minutes, stirring the pieces through the sauce. If you are using bigger crabs such as muddies, simmer the sauce for 2 minutes and cook the prices in the sauce for about 10 minutes. Then add the cornflour mix and stir through until the sauce clears and thickens. Finally, add the eggs and stit until set. Serve with rice or crusty french bread. Good with a cooling cucumber salad and a cold beer.

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.

It has to be said, however, that in the early days he was constantly telling me things that I didn’t want to hear. This is probably largely because Chinese doctors seem to have an uncanny knack of knowing exactly what you have been up to and there is nowhere to hide from their cunning diagnostic techniques. Anyway, my first consultation memorably included a ‘massage’ with hot cups and spoons which made me look as if I’d lost a fight with a tractor and advice to give up the chili and garlic. The advice was far more painful.

These instructions, delivered in a fairly offhand matter, utterly panicked me. Actually, it also panicked Pete. At the time I literally used chili and garlic in everything I cooked.  I mean, what the hell were we meant to eat? And, you know, I’m a hedonist and overall seeker of pleasure and (especially 15 years ago) tend to be disinclined to give things up just because they are bad for me. Anyway, we did it. We gave them up almost completely and in the process discovered a whole new world of home style Chinese and Japanese cooking. I do a lot of braising and poaching these days and the recipe that follows is a beautiful and homely hotpot. I believe that they are called lions head meatballs because the cabbage spills out around the meatballs like a lion’s mane. Pretty.

We went pretty much cold turkey on the garlic and chili for about 10 years. Although we very rarely eat chili now, the garlic has crept back in. I console myself with the knowledge that the fact that we live by the ocean apparently means that we can tolerate spicier food a wee bit more. Hurrah for the alchemy and balance of Chinese medicine! Either that,or my lack of self discipline is showing again…

Visit: Rosanna Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic.

Lions head meatballs

I think you’re meant to make these with pork but I do tend to get through an awful lot of pig so I do them with chicken. If you are braising these in a packet stock from the supermarket, water it down so that it is 50 / 50 chicken stock and water and add some ginger slices and a spring onion to the pan.  

• 750g pork or chicken mince
• Couple of slices of peeled ginger finely chopped
• 3 spring onions finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon shao xing or dry sherry
• little splash of soy sauce
• little splash of oyster sauce
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon cornflour and extra for rolling
• 1 wombuk (Chinese cabbage) soaked in hot water until softened.
• peanut oil
• approx 2-3 cups of chicken stock (preferably home made and asian style).

Put the meat, ginger, spring onions, shao xing, oyster and soy sauces, salt and tablespoon of cornflour in the blender and blend well. Shape the meat into generous sized meatballs then roll them in the extra cornflour (making sure to dust off the excess) and fry them until light golden brown in the peanut oil. Wrap each meatball in a softened cabbage leaf and pack tightly into a heavy based pan or hotpot. They need to be packed in tight to keep their shape so make sure you choose the right sized pan. Add the stock, cover with a lid and bring gently to the boil. Drop them down to a simmer as soon as they boil and cook gently for around 40 minutes. Serve them with steamed rice and splash with soy sauce and/or black rice vinegar for seasoning.

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.