Food memories

I don't usually blog about food. I leave that to the truly culinary gifted, such as Eat-Tori (second plug of the day...) while I usually harp on about what I have seen or read or heard or had a minor meltdown about. But here goes...

Sometimes the blogs on SMH incite another little piece of naval gazing. This one here hints a little bit at MasterChef. Food memories, cooking from the heart. Cue the tears from the emotionally strung out reality contentstants. You will see no mention of the word "journey" in this blogpost...

Anyway, Julie Dupliex reckons that someone can tell a great deal about a person from their 10 most important dishes from their life.

So in no particular order, here is my food history.

1. Lasagne - Robust and rustic, thick rich meaty sauce, creamy bechamel (or the lighter version, ricotta cheese). Golden melty cheese on top. In the Levy tribe, there is always mushrooms in the mix, and sometimes layers of thick green spinach between the blankets of pasta. Mmmmhhh.

Always my favourite, ever since I was a kid. Always the dish I booked in for birthdays. My coming home meal when I was at uni. The best thing to do with left over bolognese sauce is to shove it in between some sheets of pasta and bake it off some more.

2. Carrot Cake - My mother makes The Best Carrot Cake In The Universe. Dense and most and fruity. Smothered in lemony cream cheese icing, and topped with whole pecans. At my 21st birthday, (the kind of occasion where there is usually more of a focus on booze than cake - it isn't unheard of for three quarters of a cake to be flyblown and dried out when all and sundry awake, dry mouthed and bleary eyed the next morning) one particular friend of mine came up to me, with infectious glee in her face and voice, exclaiming "This is my fourth piece of cake!!!"

At my recent 30th celebrations, there were 2 cakes. On the eve of the party, Mum made a big cake for those peeps that were already there at the coast house - there was about a dozen of us. We cracked open the bottle of port given to my parents when I was born to be drunk at my 21st but of course, we were all a bit distracted by being maggoty at that party to drink aged port. (There was another bottle, but my godfather chose to drink that when he was housesitting once. Thanks dude.) Turns out Mum's carrot cake goes great guns with 35 year old port.

3. Malai Kofta - Otherwise known as Dog Turds. Us Levys, once again showing how classy we are. The Indian takeaway on the other side of the headland served some truly delicious curries. And curry is another specialty of my mother's - at my 21st (it was a truly great party - hence the stories) she cooked an enormous spread of curries. Because we had a Cowboys & Indians party. Indian... geddit?

Anyway, this takeaway joint was a Friday night special. And knowing how fried I feel on a Friday after a week at the Boy Factory I can understand why my parents went to Take Away Friday nights, what with them both being teachers too.

This place (and no, I can't even remember its name) did a mean mango chicken, and a killer vindaloo. But the highlight was always the Malai Kofta. Potato and almond dumplings in a pale sauce. It was always the first dish to be finished, the one where the last dumpling was divided meticulously with a micrometer screwgauge. Sometimes when I go for Indian, I will order it, even if it is not on the menu. And most times they are very accommodating, surprised at the whitey with the knowledge of this subcontinental delight. But none of them ever quite live up to the Friday night ones from Newport.

4. BSR - Not that this particular dish is a favourite. In fact, I could hardly say that I liked it very much at all. But for 2 year (98-99) as a resident and then another (07) as a tutor, I lived in Baxter College. And almost every night I was served Brown Shit & Rice. It would have a different label each night - beef & black bean, chicken casserole, pork stirfry. But the same MSGy taste, overcooked vegetable matter and a brown gravy, with chewy meat. I'm really selling it, right?

5. Chicken Pad Thai - Living in the eastern suburbs of The Big Smoke means that I was spoilt for choice when it came to Thai restaurants. The Tums Thai pad thai is pretty close to take-away perfection. In a small concretey little joint, with about a million Thai people behind the counter, churning out dozens of perfect meals every half hour. They only have about 10 tables, with uncomfortable plastic or metal chairs, designed to have you not seated for very long, so you don't take up too much time.

Their pad thai is sweet, but not too sweet. None of that revolting, mysterious 'red' sauce that other places have. Their tofu is so good that even hard core carnivores would climb over a T-Bone to have some of these deep fried squishy chunks of joy. I have never been to Thailand, but I have been told that this noodle dish tops the stuff you get on the streets of Bankok.

6. Marinated drumsticks, fried rice and baked sweet potato - Not exactly a conventional combo, but with the salty of the bacony rice, the garlicy, mustardy, chilli-y soft flesh of the drumsticks and the candied crunch of the kumera. My boyf-at-the-time used to cook this in our sharehouse in my early 20s. I think I have improved on his recipe (in my opinion, which of course is all that matters), and it was a fantastically cheap hangover lunch in my share house in London. Made me very popular with the housemates, in front of hours of surfing music video channels.

7. Omelette wraps - In the days of Working For Da Man (because a family owned small advertising company is pretty much the closest I got to Corporate Whoring), there was a little cafe across the road that served Campos coffee, and broke up the morning commute with the best brekky wrap I've ever had. Feather light omelette, chunks of chevre, fresh spinach and a sprinkle of mint leaves, then squished to crunchy perfection in the sandwich press. Entirely addictive.

And now that I am no longer in the Big Smoke, I have to make my own brekky wraps. And I think I have just about perfected it. It is essential NOT to forget the mint leaves. They tend to counter the salty cheese, and that sticky dryness that can sometimes be left behind by spinach. I like to call them Socceroo Wraps - they got me through the early mornings of this year's World Cup. Plus, they have that whole Green & Gold thing going.

8. Apple & Raspberry Macadamia Crumble - The Urban Family is a beautiful thing. Family dinners at The Palace Street Palace were rare, but always enjoyable. Each of us took a course, making for quite a feast of fairly disjointed dishes. An Asiany smoked salmon salad. A vegie pasta dish. And my crumble. I found a similar recipe on the AIS website, which is all healthy dishes for sporty types. So of course, my version has a wee bit more sugar, a smidge more butter and sweeter, redder berries. I don't tend to like crumbles that are too floury or cakey - and this one is oatey and nutty instead. This dish has been a hit with the Urban Family, with the Flesh & Blood family, with the A Team and new found friends on other other side of the world.

9. Chocolate Brownies - There wouldn't be a Summative Identity List Of Food for me with no mention of chocolate at all. These puppies were served at an inner-west housewarming, based almost on a Marie Claire recipe. After much begging, the devine hostess emailed me the recipe and I need to try hard not to bake them every week. So so buttery. So so rich and tasty. And again with the Macadamia motif.

As a part of The Carrot & The Stick motivation plan with my HSC classes, I have been known to bring in brownies as motivation (read: bribery). Usually I just use a WhiteWings packet mix, takes 3 minutes to stir and only costs a few bucks. But one week I went all out and made the premium quality, from scratch brownies. And they said they liked the cheap ones better. Part of me was a little miffed. Part of me thought 'Sweet, that is easier'

10. Danne's Supreme Pizza - I like homemade pizza better than shop bought. Don't get me wrong, Dominos does some tasty stuff with cheese and dough. The independents do even better with antipasto on woodfired bread. But so long as I can be arsed (or I get some lovely person/parent to do the sous cheffing chopping for me) to do the chopping for me, home mades are the shit. I like mine on thin & crispy base (and Bazaar does one perfectly thin & crispy enough for me), and they have a combo of salty bacon, squishy vegies (capsicum, zucchini), olives and cheese. The heroes are the sweet potato (there it is again) and goat's cheese (and another recurring star!). But the secret ingredient is the drizzle sauce  - herbs, chilli and garlic marinated in olive oil, and drizzled around the top of the pizza right before cooking. Aww yeah.

So that is the history of me in food. I didn't include bevareges of great importance. That is another list for another day. Have you got a food history for the sharing?

Opining on Opining.

Everyone blogs for a different reason. A very wise friend told me that, and she blogs about food. I tend to blog as a vent for the opinions that I can't seem to restrain, whether the world wants them or not. One of my star Year 12 boys said to me recently, "Miss, do you have an opinion about EVERYTHING? Maybe we need to get you a notebook so you can write it. Or maybe you need one of these blog thingys."

Thanks boys. Maybe I'll do that...

You got to know when to hold 'em... Or "On Happiness"

Caution: This post is bound to contain a shedload of mixed metaphors. I haven't even written them yet, but I just know they are floating under the surface. See? There is one already. How can a metaphoric shedload of metaphors, float metaphorically under the non-specified metaphoric surface.

Yes, get on with it!

Sometimes life is tops and awesome. There is love, there is time for playing, there is boozy nights and movies and finding joy in your work and getting full rested nights of sleep. Usually in those snapshot moments, it is difficult to pinpoint, difficult to state explicitly "Right now, right at this moment in time, I am Happy."

Those Perfect Moments (tm) are always easier to pinpoint retrospectively. And in 20-20 hindsight it is so easy to see how grounded you once were. How tethered you felt to your own existence, to your own destiny. How in those moments, the future, the present and the past seem so crystalised, so enlightened, so clear.

Usually the tail of those Perfect Moments (tm) is something totally out of your own control. Increased workload. Bad weather. The potential love of your life telling you that his hopes and dreams are diametrically opposed to your own.

I have always thought that ultimate happiness and fulfilment was a gamble. You need to risk something of yourself in order to gain fully. You need to put yourself out there to love and be loved in order to truly reap the rewards. At some point, you have to put all your chips into the middle of the table, put all your money on the cards you have in your hand. But unlike in gambling, where there is only one winner, I have always seen the potential for an everyone-wins kind of hand. Like both players have a royal flush in hearts.

And I know that goes against the rules of poker. I know that in the card game, there is only one winner. And the danger is that if you push all your chips out there, that your opposition will take all your brighly coloured chips, and your Rolex, and the deeds to your house, and your life savings, as well as your dignity, self-respect and potential to love again, and he will bound giddily away never to be seen from again.

Herein lies the gamble, the risk.

But imagine if your opponent didn't do that. Imagine he (and I use that gendered pronoun loosely, feel free to sub in the gender of your own choosing) also pushed in his chips, his life-savings, his emotional guard, his fears and prejudices and previous heartbreaks. And you both laid your cards on the table, to reveal matching, incedibly high scoring yet even hands.

And you all lived happily ever after.

That might happen one day, right? I guess I am kind of looking for a little reassurance that the crazy Viking cloud ship, with the puffin on the prow, is floating towards some kind of direction. Or at least has a tether somewhere to the ground so that it might not float on forever and ever without stopping. And I am hoping the universe might get back to me on that some time soon.

... An Indulgence anyway

I said, "Winter peddys. It's a bit of an indulgence, really"

The Hungry One thought I said "Paddy the Ninja is a bit of an indulgence."

I thought he said "Patting the ninja is a big of an indulgence.

All are now held to be universal truths.

Knife, Ask, Monster: A trilogy of awesome

You might think working in the Boy Factory might lead me to reading more adult or more trashy books when it comes to holidays. But truthfully, I don't think I ever quite left the Young Adult section of the bookshop. All of my favourites come from there, and not in a nostalgic kind of way. And not in a "It's an easy read" kind of way. I love the depth, the symbolism, the sophistication of the modern Young Adult novel. Or series of.



Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy is one such example. A post-apocalyptic coming of age tale, with Todd finding himself and discovering the New World on a developing settlement on a new planet. Sexual politics, racial prejudice, the overload of information in this post-Web 2.0 world, power, responsibility, terrorism... Ness deals with all of this in a delicious way, with stunningly drawn characters and a depth of emotion.

As other reviewers have noted, it is near impossible to discuss this book, or these books without giving away delicious details that are such a joy to discover in the rollercoaster of reading it. Just know this: JK Rowling has done a great deal for the increased publication of quality young adult fiction. Reading Harry has taken away lots of the negative stigma associated with reading kids books. But even more importantly, it is because of the popularity of her books that really excellent quality novels like this one have been published. Then again, I also blame her for the fact that Stephanie Meyer managed to get that vomit-in-the-shape-of-a-book-called-Twilight published. But that is a blogpost for another date...

The classification of Young Adult has generally lead to some heated diatribes, like this from Frank Cottrell Boyce in The Guardian (also loosely a review of the Chaos Walking trilogy). This article from The New Yorker also bellows about the brilliance of Young Adult dystopian novels. The general concensus of those whose opinion is more widely published than mine is that the YA section of the library and the bookshop is not the vacuous wasteland it has been in the past. The voices, the conflicts, the metaphors and the journeys of these books are rich and deep and brilliant in their construction and execution.

And I know this sounds like me trying to justify my penchant for kiddies' books. But seriously, they are just so awesome.

I am so utterly impressed with Patrick Ness and his trilogy. I don't understand why there isn't a copy of this book in everybody's hands, on buses and tubes and train platforms the world over. It is not without its critics. Punkadiddle thinks it is too violent (to which I say 'suck it up, tinkerbell, the violence raises the stakes, the violence is not meaningless, and not gratuitous). Jenny Brooks (a blogger who reads the end first) has issues with the structure and dialect (which is actually what hooked me in the first few pages) but ultimately she has much love for the story.

I wouldn't be overly surprised if this trilogy gets picked up for films. The narrative structure, particularly in the second two volumes, is really filmic... but I don't want to give away too much!

The first two volumes, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and The Answer, are in paperback - they have been out for a few years. The third, Monsters of Men was released in the last few weeks and at this stage is only in hard cover. This is a recommendation of the Highest Order.

Speaking of Y-A Dystopian... Only six weeks until the conclusion of The Hunger Games trilogy is released. Perhaps a re-read about Kitness is asked for...?