Foodie bucket list.. check!

"Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is quite my favourite of all the prominent food-writers and presenters. Never quite as shaggy, messy and disgusting as he first appears, his great knowledge, passion, insight, intelligence and skill are hidden under the silliest hair in Europe," say Stephen Fry.




River Cottage Cafe @Komedia Bath  01225 471578
 

Hugh's 'Rustic Fish Cakes with Tartare, Devon greens and toast', accompanied by organic River Cottage nettle beer.
 
**happysigh**

SOLE for the soul

or:

There's more to eating locally than you think.

I'm here in Greece. Specifically in Mykonos. More specifically in Psarou Beach.

Psarou Beach looks like this:

Which is what most people think Greece and its Islands look like. And it does. I know this, I took the bloody photo. But this isn't all.

Greece is a bloody hard, rocky, barren, goddamn difficult palce to eek out a living. Moreso now with the oft-reported and usually over-hyped "Greek-led second wave GFC"

Behind the glam and the night life and the minor celebs and the dancing all night and the naked lovelies adorning the beaces, is the harsh, sun baked reality of Greece.

Quite literally like this:

All that grey 'stuff' behind the azure-blue-and-white Cycladic architecture is where the locals ply their farming trades. And it's bare, sun-baked rock. 

So. to Cavo Psarou.

It's owned by friends of mine, I will admit that up and foremost. Cos and Petroula have run the family-owned resto since 1993. It's been in Petroula's family since the 50's.

Cos and Pet have a severely physically disabled son, and the only access they can get to appropriate and reasonable health care for him, is in Athens.

So every Tuesday morning, Petroula and her son fly to Athens for 4 days a week, for him to get therapy. It's difficult, and it's costly.

Costas and their daughter stay and run the restaurant. And every day, they watch ships and planes fly in crates of caviar and sushi for the endless appetites of those frequenting more "known" venues.

Petroula hasn't the faintest idea what sushi is. She learnt to cook as a child, and then started working in the kitchen of Cavo when she was 15. Her food, and that of the restaruant reflects all that is SOLE. Apart from the very basics of flour, sugar, salt and a few other 'bits', every single thing you eat at Cavo is grown on the family farm at Drafilki. The lamb, goat, most of the beef, the vegetables, the olives, the olive oil, the oregano, the beans, the sweet baby zuccini's. The whole freaking lot.

And it's all grown without pesticides, because they just can't afford them. Like farmers in PNG, 'organic' is a term that is unknown amongst locals here.. it's just food.. As Mani says "why you put chemicals on things that just grow?'

And they reap all of the above out of the rocky, thankless soil of the hinterland of Mykonos, far away from the wanker-azzi oonce-ooncing down on the sunlounges, hoping for a glimpse of Adnan Khashoggi's grandaughter.

They serve:

Chicken souvlaki, on home-made pita, with kale and garlic, and beans in tomato sauce.

Greek salad, with all the ingredeints, including the fetta AND the oregano that adorns it, from the farm. The sparking mineral water is from a small supplier in Athens.

local octopodi, pickled in their olive oil, with bread from a bakery in Mykonos town, and beer from Athen's first (and currently, only) microbrewery.

And as I sat there, yesterday, soaking up the sun that is as heavy and thick as honey, I saw at least half-a-dozen tourist walk in and order cheeseburgers and fries.

Or eschew the food, in favour of a sushi platter and Stella Artois at N'assos.

This isn't a post designed to tug at the heart-strings. NONE of the family would want that.

But next time you holiday. Whether it be on Mykonos, or Crete, or Ibiza or Bali or Maldives, or Portsea, just take a moment to think about where your tourist dollars (or euros) are actually going. WHO they're helping, who they're harming and what kharma you're wracking up along with those holiday calories. Sometimes a child's access to affordable and appropriate health care depends on your choice of lunch.

Soursop

Yesterday was Sunday, pretty much now my weekly "Get out of Dodge" day. This week saw me invited to a friends village. Bantu village is about an hour and a half away, in the Ramu Valley.

Once we got there, the village took me for  walk. It was truly on of the most majical experiences of my life, and photos will follow, but because this is a food blog, I'll just keep it on topic for a change!

So, here I am walking through the jungles of PNG, and I mention to the Hed Boss Man that I like to eat.

Quick as a wink, Peter... all 3ft tall and 4 years old of him, shimmies up the nearest tree...

See, this is what I mean by "no concept of organic" here. Of course there are commercial farming processes up here, but 100% of the fruit and veg you buy at the local markets are harvested and grown like in the photo. Self-seeded in the jungle surrounding a village, and harvested by hand, by pikininis.

 

and brings me a soursop, If you look closely at the pic, you can still see the sugar ants crawling all over it!

Now , I'd never tried a soursop. I've seen them at the markets, but didn't know what they were. 

 

They are delicious, a cross between a custard apple and a pineapple. Research at the National University of Colombia also suggests the soursop has strong potential anti-cancer treatment, which is kinda awesome, and SO much tastier than chemo.

 

I've saved the seeds, sacked the gardener, and I'm going to plant them in my little garden. Hopefully in a few months, I'll have some soursops of my own

Char Sui Pork

You make sacrifices to live up here. You mostly live behind 9ft steel fences and razor wire, and not all the tropical frangipanis in the world can hide that fact. It's dangerous to go into town on Thursday, as it's payday and the local troublemakers are out and about.

You ALWAYS lock your car door before leaving the compound.

It's a fact that your house WILL be burgled during your tenure up here. You buy some sort of food when you see them, because you're never sure when you'll see them again.

BUT.. the upside is that everything you buy from the market is organic and local. There are no pesticides up here that are affordable for the locals. And tropical fruits and veg are so unbelievably cheap. I get mud crabs and lobster tails delivered to my door, if I choose. A local, organic pineapple costs about 20c AUD.

And if you shop right, all your meat and eggs are local and organic as well.

Sure, you can buy Zenag or Table Birds chickens, but you can also go to the market and get one slaughtered and plucked for you, right there on the spot.

And not that they slaughter pork on the spot, but depending where you get it from, it's local and effectively free-range.

I say "effectively" because there is really no concept of free-range or organic  up here. It's all just food.

So I get my pork from a farm in the Ramu Valley, where it is left to forage on whatever the jungle can provide.

I can also get cus cus meat and smoked fruit bat, but I am working up to that!

So, to dinner.

While pre-fab sauces, rubs and marinades are becoming more regular in supermarkets, it's just as easy to grab the raw ingredients.

Believe it or not, Char Sui style cooking is popular all over the Pacific Rim,a nd not just indigenous to China. Hawaii has it's own version, as does Malaysia (where you can get vegetarian chari sui, apparently)

Recipe varied from wiki cookbooks version.

Ingredients:

• 1 kg pork shoulder, skin on
• 2 tbsp. dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. light soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. oyster sauce
• 2 tbsp. Shaoxing rice wine
• 2 tbsp. clear honey
• 4 tbsp. hoisin sauce
• ½ tsp. five spice
• red food colouring (I omitted this, as it's unavailable up here)

1. Pierce the pork all over thoroughly with a fork. This makes the pork more tender and allows the marinade to penetrate the meat to give flavour all the way through.
2. Mix all other ingredients together.
3. Place pork  in a tray and cover with marinade. Ensure strips are covered completely in marinade.
4. Cover tightly with cling film and place in the refrigerator for several hours. Overnight or for 24 hours is preferable.
5. Preheat the oven to 160°C and  place the pork on a rack over  a pan in the bottom to catch drippings. Line this pan with aluminium foil to make cleaning easier
6. Roast for 20 minutes,  Baste to build up a good layer of marinade on the outside of the meat. The pork should turn a golden-red colour as it cooks. After 20 mins, turn and baste againm giving the pork a further 20 mins at this temp.
7. Increase heat to 220°C for a further 20 mins (total cooking time, 60 mins)
8. If crackle hasn't crisped up, give it a few minute under the grill, to achieve that authentic charred look and flavour.  

1. Heat leftover marinade until it becomes thick and glossy, to use as a dipping sauce.
2. Cut pork into .5cmslices and serve on white rice with sauce/marinade. 

Mangosteens

The mangosteen is a round, purple fruit slightly smaller than a tennis ball. To eat it, you can peel away the brittle, moist rind with your palms to reveal the pure-white delicacy inside. The bitter rind is inedible, and the fruit comes in the form of variously sized wedged segments, the largest of which may hold a solitary seed. The number of segments usually varies from 4 to 8 which is matched by the number of points on the protrusion from the underside of the fruit; therefore, you can discover how many segments you are in for before you open the mangosteen. Mangosteen trees will only grow (and more importantly, fruit) in ultra-tropical zones with consistent temps above 38C. The fruit can take up to 100 days to form and ripen


The seeds of the mangosteen are considered "recalcitrant." This means that they are very short-lived and must be kept moist or they die almost as soon as they dry out.

Mangosteen trees are dioecious, meaning that there are male trees and female trees. The only problem with this is that to date, no one has been able to find a male tree anywhere in the world so if they exist, they are quite rare. Globally, it is possible that there have never been any male mangosteen trees. This places the entire burden on the female tree to perpetuate the species. No males means no pollen, even though the female flower contains rudimentary sterile anthers where pollen would normally be found. Without pollen, there is no way to fertilize the female flower and create true seeds with variable genetic traits. Instead, the female mangosteen trees succeed in perpetuating the species by a process known as agamospermy. The wall lining the ovary of the female flower, the nucellus, supplies the material that will then develop within the fruit segments and becomes what is effectively an asexually produced seed. As a result of this, it produces a clone of the mother tree.

Wiki says:

There is a legend about Queen Victoria offering a reward of 100 pounds to anyone who could deliver to her the fresh fruit. Although this legend can be traced to a 1930 publication by fruit explorer, David Fairchild, it is not substantiated by any known historical document. In his publication, "Hortus Veitchii", James Herbert Veitch says that he visited Java in 1892, "to eat the Mangosteen. It is necessary to eat the Mangosteen grown within three or four degrees of latitude of the equator to realize at all the attractive and curious properties of this fruit.

organic mangosteens from Cape Trib now available at Heng's Organic Fruit and Veg, in Kerrie Road, Glen Waverley. Stop whatever you're doing and go there now. I guarantee it will be worth it.

Called "The Queen of Fruit", Mangosteens are still quite rare. And expensive. If you can get your hands on then, they are worth the $$$. Spectacular looking, with a taste that is quite indescribable. The edible arils have the consistency of a lychee, the taste of something like a peach crossed with a grape, and the perfume is sweet, almost strawberry-ish.

Apparently you can brew a tea from the rind, but I will content myself with the luscious fruit.

pit-pit

One of the things I wanted to do while I was up here in PNG, was learn about the local food. PNG, and Lae is blessed with an abundance of tropical fruits and veggies that we just can't get in Melbourne. For example, I have tried paw paw at home, and found it really rather nasty. But up here, fresh off the tree, with a squeeze of lemon juice...

Heaven.

PNG is a foodie/localvore's wet dream. All the produce sold at the local market is from the area... and I mean, within a couple of hours' WALK. No pesticides are used (too expensive) and the suppliers are the local villages, so the money you spend stays in the local community.

You can go to the supermarkets and get apples or pears, or watermelon wrapped in plastic, but why would you??

I also wanted to find out about local dishes, and on the way home from Madang this weekend, we stopped at a road side stall to buy what I thought was lemon grass.



It turned out to be something called pit-pit, and at K2.00 (AUD $0.75) I thought that I'd give it a red hot go, and get our haus mari to teach me to cook it.

pit-pit is the edible stalk of a wild cane that grows rampantly up here. It looks like lemongrass on steroids. And I was reliably informed that to cook pit pit, you need coconut. Not kulau, young coconut, but "dry" coconut.



And to get to the meat of the dry coconut, I was going to need some tools.

A panga, or a mean-arse freaking HUGE bush knife. And a coconut scraper.



You can buy electric coconut scrapers up here, for about K300.00, but for the amount of times that I will be using it, a K4.00 worked just fine.

It's bloody hard work, though, and took about half an hour to scrape the meat from a single coconut.



you peel the outer leaves from the pit pit, and expose the "meat", which can only be described as like a white bullrush.



Boil the pit pits in water and salt, for about 20 minutes. Add sliced "strong banana" if you care to.



While the pit pit is cooking, add about 1/2 a cup of water to your scraped coconut and wring the cream out of it. Discard the coconut pulp.




Drain the cooking water from the pit-pit/banana and return to pot. Add the coconut milk, a sliced chili, 1/4 of a brown onion finely chopped, a knob of fresh grated ginger and bring back to the boil. Simmer for a further 10 minutes.




The banana takes on the texture of a cooked potato and the pit-pit absorbed a lot of the coconut water. It's amazingly tasty and must be super low-GI, as we weren't hungry again for hours.

VCE exams.

For the next few weeks, the House of Fur and Purple Love is going to revolve around our son, The Lima Bean. He's sitting his VCE exams. This means that the rest of the household defers to his every whim. It was the same for all his other sibs who have previously sat their VCE. The rules in our house are simple. During your VCE year (and more so during the exams) their job is to study. To eat, sleep. drink., fart and poop study. The rest of the family's job is to facilitate that happening.

The Lima Bean came to me recently and told me that he was thinking of throwing in his studies and becoming a barrista. I instantly went into Jewish Mother mode and told him he was pronouncing it wrong

"It's BARRISTER, dahlink, not BARRISTA"

So, more of the Jewish/Italian/Greek mother came out in me this morning, when I was making him breakfast. What do you make to send your son out into the most stressful time of his entire schooling?

For me it was a no-brainer. It had to be something low GI, nourishing, healthy and "brain-boosting"

Enter my fave range of breakfast foods, Real Good Foods .

What is Real Good Food?

The closest most of us come to eating wholefoods is through a diet of white & refined rice & bread – nutritionally ‘empty’ food that fails to give us the essential nutrients found naturally in wholefood. Advocates of wholefood claim that up to 90% of nutrients such as b vitamins, calcium, protein and vitamin e are removed from the grain in its refinement.

With the idea of returning organic wholefood to our diet in an enticing way, realgoodfood began. Eleven years on we remain committed to our philosophy of working with certified organic and biodynamic organic wholefood. Our ingredients are grown in nutrient rich soil by Australia’s best growers and minimally processed to preserve flavour and valuable oils. This is premium wholefood.

My personal fave is their organic lemon polenta porridge.

A coeliacs delight, this organic porridge has a zesty tang that will warm your heart. Made with freshly ground corn meal & wholegrain rice this is a creamy meal that gives long lasting energy. Corn & wholegrain rice are nutritious grains that are well worth a place in a wholefoods diet. ? We recommend it be cooked with a combination of water, milk & apple or pear juice

I cooked it in whole milk, with some organic honey. It's wonderfully creamy and rich, with a real "stick to your ribs" goodness about it. It's bung full of whole nuts and dried fruit as well. It is pretty much made of pure, organic, biodynamic, Lima Bean-fueling awesomeness. It's not cheap, but 1/2 a cup of mix makes about 1.5 cups of finished polenta. More than enough for a growing Lima Bean. I get mine from the organic fruit shop in Kerrie Road, where they stock quite a few Real Good Food products, including another fave:

So, if you're reading this today, spare a thought for Lima Bean. There is a lot of pressure on kids today to make life decisions at the tender age of 17, and the pressure that's applied to kids, in regard to VCE, is far more than when I did my HSC all those years ago. He may not end up being a barrister, and I am actually quite OK with that, but however today's results turn out, I know that he's gone off with a tummy full of brain-enhancing goodness.

pg and sticky are proud to announce....

SOLE Mama's blog and forums!

Or click the cute little widget to the right!!

It's a little project we've been working on for a while now, but we've finished BETA testing and now we're ready to unveil our little baby!

The list of suppliers is kinda specifically for Victoria, but we have included plenty of links and forum rooms for other Aussies.. and even overseas SOLE sistas and bruffers... SOLE Mama doesn't care where you live... advice on growing or sourcing the good stuff and cooking it is universal!

AND, IT'S EVEN GOT A CHAT ROOM FEATURE!!!

We'll be adding links and other information as we grow!

There's lots of stuff to read and enjoy, so get over to SOLE Mama's, join up (it's free and takes about 1 minute!)

Feel free to share the links with other SOLE-minded folks, or anyone who just wants to drop by for a cuppa!

It's not about defining SOLE, it's a place to share whatever SOLE means to you!

Drop by and help SOLE Mama and the gang get to the Heart of SOLE!

Oh, and if you'd like to help out be getting the cute little widget you see in the side bar to the right, just let me know and I'll send you the code!

Exotic stuff!!

I often wonder if my food ravings fall on deaf (or possibly bored) ears... Like anyone with an obsession, I find that most of my conversations centre around it. When asked "How are you?" I will most often reply with an answer that has food at the core.. "I'm stuffed, I cooked for 16 last night" or "I'm great! I tried a recipe for bouillabaisse last night and it was da BOMB!" or even "I am so freakin excited, I just found a local supplier of my favourite rasa al hanout!" I have been increasingly aware that I have very little else in my life except my food obsession, and was becoming concerned that I should maybe broaden my horizons.

Until this weekend when my friend Jo asked me out on a food date.

Apparently, several months ago a series of food shops opened up at Doncaster Westfield, and Jo has been walking around the centre for months thinking to herself "pg would LOVE this!!"

So maybe those ears are not so bored, and there IS a social need to open up discourse on food, food miles, SOLE food and what constitutes GOOD food. As part of my theory on "What is Australian Food", I surmise that as we, as a society, further evolve, we move further from the food of the traditional Motherland, and are entering a phase where the food of our actual citizens becomes less of the exotic, and more of the mainstream.

Like any adolescent, we're breaking the ties with Mum and Dad, and evolving our own identity, based on the sum of our experiences. And the reality for Australia, and its cuisine, is that a huge percentage of our collective experiences are from other cultures.

Thus more and more purveyors of food and food stuffs are carrying the ingredients and the flavours of Africa, or central Europe, of Latin America, of the Orient.

And this is what is obvious in 4 shops in a pretty standard suburban shopping centre.

The first shop is Jones the Grocer. You know that Australian palates are changing, when you have a providor with a cheese room, in the 'burbs. There are various tasting stations, the presentation is immaculate, the staff are young, good-looking and knowledgeable, and the food is SENSATIONAL. Their macadamia fudge made me make a mess in my rompers, and I am not a sweet-toothed person. You can buy anything from Tartuflanghe Italian acacia honey with truffle to Jones the Grocer's own brand of lavosh. Galler Belgium chocolate to dried porcinis.

The second shop is Oil and Vinegar. As far as I can find out, it is the first of this franchise in Australia, Again, presentation is immaculate, the feature wall being covered with a dozen or so glass amphorae with different oils and, well.. vinegars in them. The amphorae are backlit, and the effect is spectacular. Forget the demise of Tastespotting.. if you want real life food porn, it's there for you in the 'burbs! They too have several tasting stations, and you can sample everything from the real aged Moderna aceto balsamico (at $35 per 150ml) to both white and black truffle oil.

The third shop is El Bazaar, a funky shop that stocks all things Middle Eastern. here you can scoop chick peas from hessian sacks, and if you close your eyes and inhale you could very well be in a souk, or the spice markets of Istanbul. The prices of their dried goods were ridiculously cheap, and with Coles only 2 shops away, this puts paid to the argument I often hear that "shopping SOLE is too time consuming. I don't have time to go to individual shops". El Bazaar has a huge range of dried fruits and nuts, and the shelves are stocked with an amazing array of fruit pastes and gels and spices and cookware. I asked the young girl behind the jump about tagines and she offered to ring her Mum to see if you could get an answer to my queries! Now THAT's service.

The final shop was the Oxfam shop where you can get everything from a "Not Made In A Sweat Shop" bag, thru fair trade quinoa to organic chocolate.

And it's at these last two places I made my purchases.

The Nabali Tree Olive Oil. (from the Oxfam shop) I have Googled for info on this product and found absolutely NOTHING. SO, dear readers, I believe I am the first person ever, to write about it. It doesn't even feature in their online catalogue.

Nabali Tree olive oil is organic cold-pressed extra virgin OO, certified USDA organic, certified Fair For Life by IMO and is a member of the Palestinian Fair Trade Association. It is a product of Canaan Fair Trade, Palestine. The label reads:

"Fruity and flavorful and legendary, Nabali Tree Olive Oil, from the native olive tree of Palestine, the ancient home of olive oil.

Canaan oilve oil is naturally organic owing to the ancient Canaanite traditions of farming that persist to this day. Canaan olive oil is produced by farmer cooperatives that are members of the Palestine Fair Trade Association. We guarantee fair prices to farmers and reinvest a portion of our profits in developing projects that serve the farming community. If you are enjoying this oil withing 3 to 6 months of pressing, you will experience the peppery hints and subtle bitter aftertones of "Zeit Fghish", a set of taste impressions unique to freshly pressed Palestinian Olive Oil"

It is a Chartreuse green, and I couldn't detect any peppery notes, but the date on my bottle says it was pressed in 2007, so I might have missed the time period and the oil is more mature. There is most definitely a bitter note to the oil, which mellows on the back palate. It is really a unique olive oil. I am planning to use it as a dipping oil with some sumac and Za’atar.



And my other purchase was from El Bazzar. Some Pashmak, or Persian Fairy Floss. The very knowledgeable young girl behind the jump (the same one who offered to ring her Mum for tips on tagine cooking) explained that this stuff is basically halva that has been pulled and stretched in a similar way to pulled noodles until it resembles fairy floss. It has a pronounced nutty taste. Actually, it tastes exactly like it sounds.. nutty and sweet.. Halva in thread form. A large box cost me $6.50, and I am going to top some hot chocolate chai with it al la Mute Monkey's Beetroot experience. The kids had some last night, atop Emmaline's Chocolate Indulgence Cookies, and some vanilla ice cream. It looks and tastes decadent and spectacular!

So forget all those anti-SOLE arguments, and get with the programme. Those of us in the 'burbs no longer have to trek to Turkisk/Greek/Viet enclaves to get our fix of "exotic" ingredients. We no longer have to brave the Nazi parking officers in Richmond, to get a Simon Johnson-esque rush. We can buy beautiful, fresh, ethical ethnic ingredients at our doorsteps, and incorporate them into our everyday cooking!

Furry and pg are proud to announce the arrival of...

Our very first (and only) organic pumpkin!!! We'd especially like to thank our midwife, Possumchops, who has been with us right from the start, when we decided to try to conceive (our organic garden). Without her help and support, we'd never have got this far. Who knew that someone, anyone? knew THAT much about vegetable sex?



We live in Glen Waverley, veritably the goegraphical heart of Melbourne, in a converted 1950's Brick Venereal, with a backyard slightly larger than a matchbox. And 2 dogs who like to dig. So we planted this beauty in the front yard (there's the Wog in me coming out again!) and trained it up over the dodgy 50's white iron balustrade. Under possum's careful tutleage, I have resisted harvesting her until the vine died back, but now.. here she is!!

I hand polinated over 30 plants (and developed a somewhat disturbing penchant for veggie sex), but this is the only one that took. Several more got to the size of baseballs and then went all manky and black and mouldacious....I think I meed some veggie IVF next year.




So, despite a few scars from the forceps, here is out baby... Stand by for futher reports of how she turns out (curried? soups? bakes? bread? gnocci?)