I'm reading a fascinating book The Coffee House, A Cultural History, by Markman Ellis, which is one of those books that gives me a brand new slant on the history I was taught way back in High School. In particular this book through looking at the establishment and growth of coffee houses in England tells me so much about the political debates during the English interregnum, the period of parliamentary and military rule under Cromwell and the Commonwealth of England beginning with the overthrow of Charles I (1649) and the restoration of Charles II (1660) and then into the period of potential sedition in the years following. The coffee houses were set up to sell what was the new beverage at the time, and apparently was drunk black and without sugar as part of a trend at that time for bitterer beverages, but became the meeting places for those advocating for the establishment of a republic in the first instance, and then for those with designs to bring down Charles II. They went on to become the meeting places out of which grew the stock exchange, a de facto peer review of the 'new' medicine and experimental scientific method, and hotbeds for the various competing literati of the times.
They were widely approved of because they provided a place for men (yes, men only though many were fronted by women) to meet in free and open debate as equals without descending into alcohol fuelled aggression and abuse. The equality was famously spatially created by having people have to take whatever seat was available when they dropped in and so having to chat to whoever was at the same table, ie. you and your mates didn't hog a table and just talk to each other. They became more formalised and elite over time as they became specialised, but accounts from the early years continually emphasised this aspect, and indeed this was one of the features that was criticised by those who clearly were aghast at the notion that class boundaries could be erased so easily. Not that they were totally class free - they certainly were not places where the working class went, they apparently still quite liked there ale and gin houses.
They had tables on which anyone could put copies of opinions pieces, satirical verses, political propositions and such for all comers to read and to be thence potential foci for discussion. Charles II tried a number of measures to stymie them but was unsuccessful.
Reading about them has led me to reflect on the absence of public spaces like this now. Try and start a discussion in your local cafe and it is more than likely going to end with you being asked to leave and let the rest of the customers enjoy their soydecafextrahotlattes. Try and leave pamphlets around without permission and you will be sent on your way in short order. And if you did leave them around they would be pretty promptly overtopped by several issues of music, fashion and health magazines. Try and sit at a table where one of the seats may be unoccupied and you will get the kind of reception that would make Frosty the Snowman cold.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Future Food
In the Travel and Indulgence section of the Weekend Australian, June 25-26, 2011, Kendal Hill cites a half dozen or so 'world's leading chefs at the recent S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants in London' on 'the next big trends' in food, meaning here only restaurant food, and indeed, given those he spoke to, only the haute cuisine end of the restaurant spectrum.
I have to say I found their views underwhelming, gratingly cliche and out of touch. They all talk of turning to food that is local [though what they mean by this means anything from locally sourced to a constructed national cuisine] and natural, in opposition apparently to molecular. I wonder as I read this where and with whom these chefs have been eating for the past dozen and more years that they talk as if it is they who are discovering the value of these and will now proceed to instruct us in how this will be achieved, all the while of course charging us premium dollars.
What, for example am I to make of the following comment from Rene Redzepi of Copenhagen's Noma restaurant, the current 'best chef in the world' according to the organisers of the event. In response to the question where is food heading he said ;In our region it's heading towards more thorough exploration of ourselves. Of our soil, of our waters, of our gastronomic heritage. A deeper understanding of why it is we eat as we do; that cooking is a way to explore the world; that food is something that should be integral, not like some weird alter ego to you that you feel awkward about.'
Copenhagen's a fair way north of Italy but I can't believe that the discussions about regionalism, sustainability, and the cultural meanings of food -sustenance, conviviality, hospitality, it's capacity for stimulating cross-cultural understanding and so on - kick-started by the Slow Food movement a dozen years ago has not been part of the food culture of Denmark for at least as long. Nor can I believe that there are many people sitting down to their daily meals worldwide who 'feel awkward' about their food. The degree of dissociation apparent in these statements is staggering.
As it is in the proposal by Brett Graham of The Ledbury in London that there will be a 'real shift towards tasting menus'. I don't see your average punter being happy about coughing up the $250 or thereabouts that Tony Bilson is now apparently charging for his new degustation menu when they want a night out of fine dining.
But then I reflect that these are views from kitchens where feeding has been stripped of most of its cultural meanings and values and distressingly retains only its capacity for class distinction and self-aggrandisement.
I have to say I found their views underwhelming, gratingly cliche and out of touch. They all talk of turning to food that is local [though what they mean by this means anything from locally sourced to a constructed national cuisine] and natural, in opposition apparently to molecular. I wonder as I read this where and with whom these chefs have been eating for the past dozen and more years that they talk as if it is they who are discovering the value of these and will now proceed to instruct us in how this will be achieved, all the while of course charging us premium dollars.
What, for example am I to make of the following comment from Rene Redzepi of Copenhagen's Noma restaurant, the current 'best chef in the world' according to the organisers of the event. In response to the question where is food heading he said ;In our region it's heading towards more thorough exploration of ourselves. Of our soil, of our waters, of our gastronomic heritage. A deeper understanding of why it is we eat as we do; that cooking is a way to explore the world; that food is something that should be integral, not like some weird alter ego to you that you feel awkward about.'
Copenhagen's a fair way north of Italy but I can't believe that the discussions about regionalism, sustainability, and the cultural meanings of food -sustenance, conviviality, hospitality, it's capacity for stimulating cross-cultural understanding and so on - kick-started by the Slow Food movement a dozen years ago has not been part of the food culture of Denmark for at least as long. Nor can I believe that there are many people sitting down to their daily meals worldwide who 'feel awkward' about their food. The degree of dissociation apparent in these statements is staggering.
As it is in the proposal by Brett Graham of The Ledbury in London that there will be a 'real shift towards tasting menus'. I don't see your average punter being happy about coughing up the $250 or thereabouts that Tony Bilson is now apparently charging for his new degustation menu when they want a night out of fine dining.
But then I reflect that these are views from kitchens where feeding has been stripped of most of its cultural meanings and values and distressingly retains only its capacity for class distinction and self-aggrandisement.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
The Economic Necessity of Obesity
At TedX this year, Katherine Samaras, a senior staff specialist in endocrinology and metabolism at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and group leader in Clinical Diabetes and Obesity at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, focused her 15 minutes on obesity. Much of what she said wouldn't be new to any of us foodographer [I just made that term up so those of us who write about food could use it when we wanted to come across all academicky], but she dropped a phrase that caught my attention and did set me thinking, which is what Ted X is supposed to do so hurrah for that.
One slide she flashed up was titled The Economic Necessity of Obesity which suggested provocatively that perhaps one of the reasons why governments are reluctant to legislate against or place restrictions on the advertising and availability of foods that are linked to obesity is that the food industry is too significant a contributor to the economy.
My first response was of course to go 'yeah, grrl, for it'. My second response was, hmmm, where are the figures that could back a contention that the food industry was vitally necessary to the Australian economy and further even if that were the case, where is the evidence to suggest that it is the obese potential end of the industry that carries the burden of pumping into the economy. So I googled 'how much does the food industry contribute to the Australian GDP' and was, to keep the food metaphors flowing, gob-smacked by just to what extent the industry is in fact a major part of the Australian economy. The following is from the Food Industry page of the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [felicitously acronmyed as DFAT]
Okay, so food business is big business in Australia, but it's still a leap to say the obesity is an economic necessity, I mean, not all of the food industry is about processing food that's going to make someone obese, is it?
Well, here's an interesting table from the DFAT site.
Sector Turnover (2005-06, $millions)
Bakery products 4 005
Beverage and malt manufacturing 13 289
Dairy products 9 991
Flour mill and cereal food manufacturing 3 692
Fruit and vegetable processing 4 672
Meat and meat products 17 836
Oil and fat manufacturing 1 547
Seafood processing 1 330
Sugar and confectionery manufacturing 6 456
Other food manufacturing 8 554
Having just done some work for Cancer Council of NSW in which I became perhaps too familiar with their nutritional guidelines for cancer prevention, around 74% of the turnover is in sectors whose products if eaten incautiously are likely to lead to unhealthy body weight/ obesity and hence increased likelihood of cancers.
This is still not proof that crap food is an economic necessity, but it did give me food for (lean) thought.
You can hear the full talk from Katherine Samaras here.
One slide she flashed up was titled The Economic Necessity of Obesity which suggested provocatively that perhaps one of the reasons why governments are reluctant to legislate against or place restrictions on the advertising and availability of foods that are linked to obesity is that the food industry is too significant a contributor to the economy.
My first response was of course to go 'yeah, grrl, for it'. My second response was, hmmm, where are the figures that could back a contention that the food industry was vitally necessary to the Australian economy and further even if that were the case, where is the evidence to suggest that it is the obese potential end of the industry that carries the burden of pumping into the economy. So I googled 'how much does the food industry contribute to the Australian GDP' and was, to keep the food metaphors flowing, gob-smacked by just to what extent the industry is in fact a major part of the Australian economy. The following is from the Food Industry page of the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [felicitously acronmyed as DFAT]
- Food accounts for 46% of all the retail turnover in Australia.
- Total retail spending on food and liquor in 2006-2007 was $106.6 billion, an increase of 8% on the previous year.
- Around 191,400 people were employed in food and beverage manufacturing in 2007-2007.
- Over 40% of food processing employment occurs in non-metropolitan areas.
- The processed food and beverage industry is Australia's largest manufacturing industry with a turnover of more than $71.4 billion in 2005-06. Growth in the value of output has averaged around 2% a year over the past 10 years.
- Australia's 50 largest food and beverage corporations produce almost three-quarters of the domestic industry's revenue.
- Food exports reached a peak of $30.8 billion (2007-07 dollars) in 2001-02 and have been declining ever since because of drought and changes in demand from overseas markets.
- Food products, incorporating processed food and fresh horticultural produce makes up 19% of Australia's merchandise exports. [Though as per above this has been declining over the last years.]
- Based on 2000-01 figures, the processed food industry alone contributed 2.2% to Australia's GDP.
Okay, so food business is big business in Australia, but it's still a leap to say the obesity is an economic necessity, I mean, not all of the food industry is about processing food that's going to make someone obese, is it?
Well, here's an interesting table from the DFAT site.
Sector Turnover (2005-06, $millions)
Bakery products 4 005
Beverage and malt manufacturing 13 289
Dairy products 9 991
Flour mill and cereal food manufacturing 3 692
Fruit and vegetable processing 4 672
Meat and meat products 17 836
Oil and fat manufacturing 1 547
Seafood processing 1 330
Sugar and confectionery manufacturing 6 456
Other food manufacturing 8 554
Having just done some work for Cancer Council of NSW in which I became perhaps too familiar with their nutritional guidelines for cancer prevention, around 74% of the turnover is in sectors whose products if eaten incautiously are likely to lead to unhealthy body weight/ obesity and hence increased likelihood of cancers.
This is still not proof that crap food is an economic necessity, but it did give me food for (lean) thought.
You can hear the full talk from Katherine Samaras here.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Of Japanese Raisins and Wild Asparagus
The pleasure of hitting either of my usual Farmers' Markets (Orange Grove or Addison Road both managed by the same mob - Organic Food Markets) is to truly immerse myself in seasonality, sustainability and sensory satiation that evokes memory [was that too florid? - too bad].
Like when I find Red Somerset apples from Orange [said to come from only five trees is a location known only to the purveyor] and discover them to be the precise flavour and texture of the apples I ate off the trees in the orchard in Arcadia, Sydney, where I first lived in Australia. [And how strange that in writing those words suddenly for me the connection is made for the first time between the rural village of that name on the outskirts of Sydney in the early 1960's and the mythologised Arcadia, home of Pan, and later idealised as an unspoiled land, both reality and metaphor of what if felt like to live for brief summer in transit between a Burgher Sri Lankan childhood and an Australian adolescence].
But equal, or perhaps more so, is the thrill when something unknown appears at a stall and I am there early enough to not hold up the rest of the purchasers too much as I screech over the find and bombard the stallholder with questions, and greedily grasp for any part of the product that I can pop in my mouth, and eagerly proffer whatever the price just so I can take it home and wonder about it. Like the moment my tongue first tingled to that fizzy sweet impossible coloured powder sold as sherbet in my late primary years in Singleton; the moment when all the unfairness of not-having-been-told-before is sharpest but is instantly overwhelmed by the now of knowing and the future of indulging. [Yes, yes, I know - pushing it.]
Take last weekend, for example. I always make a visit to the Li Sun stall at Orange Grove for the mushrooms grown in the old railway tunnels at Mittagong in NSW and their forest gathered mushrooms like Slippery Jacks and Saffron Milk Caps in season.Year before last, just once they had Wood Blewitts, and earlier this year they had a bare omelet's worth of Grey Ghosts.This week they had some Fairy Ring and Morels.
But more exciting than these were small white twine tied bunches of something that looked like pale green heads of just budding lavender on thickish grassy stalks. They weren't of course - they were bunches of wild asparagus, Ornithogalum pyrenaicum, also known as Bath asparagus (named for their profusion in said English town), Pyrenees star of Bethlehem or spiked star of Bethlehem (and these at the market were indeed imported from the Pyrenees), a plant unrelated to the asparagus but with ascribed visual and flavour similarities to said delicacy.
Breaking with locavorism (and getting a serious talking to from another stall holder as a result when I enthused about them to him, which almost made me return the Jerusalem artichokes I was buying from him), and breaking the bank (they were not cheap), I bought two bunches. One of my bunches is pictured at left, and you can see many more images here, including one which will show you why it is called star of Bethlehem, for its flower, of course.
Seeking to assure myself that it would be best to treat them as simply as possible I came across the site of Chef Simon site with lovely pics of cooking asperge de boi ou aspergette which, for the lazy, shows their stalks being cut (though they are quite soft and delicious in themselves) and the now foreshortened stems spa-ing for a couple of minutes into boiling salted water.
Of course when it came to actually cook them tonight, I realised how meagre my score or so of heads of wild asparagus would look atop the baked polenta I had chosen for the carbo part of the meal, and couldn't help but elaborate the dish. I ended up with leeks, morels, fairy ring mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and wild asparagus sauteed in olive oil with sage and thyme, a little salt and a grind or two of black pepper. The poor Ornithogalum held their own in this melange, however, the head remaining al dente, with a flavour more toward the greener end of the stems of the Alliaceous family (the one that includes shallots and onions), or what I imagine a young tuberose stem might taste like should I be game enough to chomp down on it, and I mean that to be a compliment, the potential pleasure of the flavour that is.
The other delight was at the stall of Robin and Gertrude Williams of Mangrove Mountain. They are my regular supplier of rhubarb, honey, eggs, and flowers. This week they had also brought down some - what does one call them branches? bunches? sprays? - of Japanese Raisins (Hovenia dulcis), something the like of which I can honestly say I have never seen.
What looks like a parasitic lump, in the picture at right is a stem sugar store for the now defunct flower and the developing seed (you can't see it on my pic but you can if you check out those here).We ate them fresh at the stall, breaking off a fat little section, nipping off the seeds (saved for planting - they apparently have a 60% rate of success of propagation according to yet another stallholder at the market - Darcy of Mosswood
The taste in this fresh form, as attested to by the various persons who passed through my house over the weekend and on whom they were pressed, is like apple or pear, very juicy and very sweet with an acid undertone. They don't look or taste like raisins at this stage so I wondered about the name. But two days later, as they have dried a little, they are turning a candy brown and tasting very much like dried fruit. Wikipedia tells me that the Korea Food & Drug Administration approved on December 2008 that extracts of the fruit can protect and help recover the liver from substances such as alcohol. The main chemical for this effect in Hovenia dulcis is Quercetin, which has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. There is also apparently in Korea a dairy product called Kupffers which contains 2,460 mg of Hovenia dulcis extract. I am tempted to drink heaps tonight test this out.
Like when I find Red Somerset apples from Orange [said to come from only five trees is a location known only to the purveyor] and discover them to be the precise flavour and texture of the apples I ate off the trees in the orchard in Arcadia, Sydney, where I first lived in Australia. [And how strange that in writing those words suddenly for me the connection is made for the first time between the rural village of that name on the outskirts of Sydney in the early 1960's and the mythologised Arcadia, home of Pan, and later idealised as an unspoiled land, both reality and metaphor of what if felt like to live for brief summer in transit between a Burgher Sri Lankan childhood and an Australian adolescence].
But equal, or perhaps more so, is the thrill when something unknown appears at a stall and I am there early enough to not hold up the rest of the purchasers too much as I screech over the find and bombard the stallholder with questions, and greedily grasp for any part of the product that I can pop in my mouth, and eagerly proffer whatever the price just so I can take it home and wonder about it. Like the moment my tongue first tingled to that fizzy sweet impossible coloured powder sold as sherbet in my late primary years in Singleton; the moment when all the unfairness of not-having-been-told-before is sharpest but is instantly overwhelmed by the now of knowing and the future of indulging. [Yes, yes, I know - pushing it.]
Take last weekend, for example. I always make a visit to the Li Sun stall at Orange Grove for the mushrooms grown in the old railway tunnels at Mittagong in NSW and their forest gathered mushrooms like Slippery Jacks and Saffron Milk Caps in season.Year before last, just once they had Wood Blewitts, and earlier this year they had a bare omelet's worth of Grey Ghosts.This week they had some Fairy Ring and Morels.
But more exciting than these were small white twine tied bunches of something that looked like pale green heads of just budding lavender on thickish grassy stalks. They weren't of course - they were bunches of wild asparagus, Ornithogalum pyrenaicum, also known as Bath asparagus (named for their profusion in said English town), Pyrenees star of Bethlehem or spiked star of Bethlehem (and these at the market were indeed imported from the Pyrenees), a plant unrelated to the asparagus but with ascribed visual and flavour similarities to said delicacy.
Breaking with locavorism (and getting a serious talking to from another stall holder as a result when I enthused about them to him, which almost made me return the Jerusalem artichokes I was buying from him), and breaking the bank (they were not cheap), I bought two bunches. One of my bunches is pictured at left, and you can see many more images here, including one which will show you why it is called star of Bethlehem, for its flower, of course.Seeking to assure myself that it would be best to treat them as simply as possible I came across the site of Chef Simon site with lovely pics of cooking asperge de boi ou aspergette which, for the lazy, shows their stalks being cut (though they are quite soft and delicious in themselves) and the now foreshortened stems spa-ing for a couple of minutes into boiling salted water.
Of course when it came to actually cook them tonight, I realised how meagre my score or so of heads of wild asparagus would look atop the baked polenta I had chosen for the carbo part of the meal, and couldn't help but elaborate the dish. I ended up with leeks, morels, fairy ring mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and wild asparagus sauteed in olive oil with sage and thyme, a little salt and a grind or two of black pepper. The poor Ornithogalum held their own in this melange, however, the head remaining al dente, with a flavour more toward the greener end of the stems of the Alliaceous family (the one that includes shallots and onions), or what I imagine a young tuberose stem might taste like should I be game enough to chomp down on it, and I mean that to be a compliment, the potential pleasure of the flavour that is.
The other delight was at the stall of Robin and Gertrude Williams of Mangrove Mountain. They are my regular supplier of rhubarb, honey, eggs, and flowers. This week they had also brought down some - what does one call them branches? bunches? sprays? - of Japanese Raisins (Hovenia dulcis), something the like of which I can honestly say I have never seen.What looks like a parasitic lump, in the picture at right is a stem sugar store for the now defunct flower and the developing seed (you can't see it on my pic but you can if you check out those here).We ate them fresh at the stall, breaking off a fat little section, nipping off the seeds (saved for planting - they apparently have a 60% rate of success of propagation according to yet another stallholder at the market - Darcy of Mosswood
The taste in this fresh form, as attested to by the various persons who passed through my house over the weekend and on whom they were pressed, is like apple or pear, very juicy and very sweet with an acid undertone. They don't look or taste like raisins at this stage so I wondered about the name. But two days later, as they have dried a little, they are turning a candy brown and tasting very much like dried fruit. Wikipedia tells me that the Korea Food & Drug Administration approved on December 2008 that extracts of the fruit can protect and help recover the liver from substances such as alcohol. The main chemical for this effect in Hovenia dulcis is Quercetin, which has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. There is also apparently in Korea a dairy product called Kupffers which contains 2,460 mg of Hovenia dulcis extract. I am tempted to drink heaps tonight test this out.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Alcohol Adaptation
This just found in New Scientist May 14 2011 No 2812.
Vertebrates, which as all of you know includes we humans, had evolved genes to metabolise ethanol 360 million years before flowering plants started producing fruit whose fermentation could produce alcohol. Hector Riveros-Rosas of the National Autonomous University of Mexico City [love that name, makes me want places like Sydney Uni to disclose how non-autonomous it is!] had found that the gene for alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) [hmm, and there's an interesting acronym in the context of the known impact of alcohol on attention spans] first shows up in vertebrates around 440 million years ago, which is long before flowering plants evolved and also before conifers began producing berries that can ferment and make alcohol. It had previously been thought that the gene evolved in response to the making possible of alcohol.
Now the weird thing is that this gene seems to have been developed to breakdown hormones in us like dopamine and then got 'hijacked for our bacchanalian pleasures', as the article puts it. But of course there is nothing really being hijacked here given that dopamine is released when we indulge in those other accompaniments to Bacchanals - sex, drugs, food, and in more recent times, rock and roll. All that seems to have happened is that this gene that was already having a great time scoffed a fermenting fruit one day and recognised the potential in it for even more pleasure than it was already getting.
The question remains though, given we humans didn't come along until waaaaaaaaaaaay later, which was the lucky vertebrate that hosted the first ADH gene. Having an accountable attachment to it, I hope it was a distant forbear of the coati.
Vertebrates, which as all of you know includes we humans, had evolved genes to metabolise ethanol 360 million years before flowering plants started producing fruit whose fermentation could produce alcohol. Hector Riveros-Rosas of the National Autonomous University of Mexico City [love that name, makes me want places like Sydney Uni to disclose how non-autonomous it is!] had found that the gene for alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) [hmm, and there's an interesting acronym in the context of the known impact of alcohol on attention spans] first shows up in vertebrates around 440 million years ago, which is long before flowering plants evolved and also before conifers began producing berries that can ferment and make alcohol. It had previously been thought that the gene evolved in response to the making possible of alcohol.
Now the weird thing is that this gene seems to have been developed to breakdown hormones in us like dopamine and then got 'hijacked for our bacchanalian pleasures', as the article puts it. But of course there is nothing really being hijacked here given that dopamine is released when we indulge in those other accompaniments to Bacchanals - sex, drugs, food, and in more recent times, rock and roll. All that seems to have happened is that this gene that was already having a great time scoffed a fermenting fruit one day and recognised the potential in it for even more pleasure than it was already getting.
The question remains though, given we humans didn't come along until waaaaaaaaaaaay later, which was the lucky vertebrate that hosted the first ADH gene. Having an accountable attachment to it, I hope it was a distant forbear of the coati.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Having my vitamin C just got a whole lot more interesting.
Mmm mmm. I have been relishing heirloom tomatoes for the last few weeks brought to the local farmers' markets from Orange. They are excellent just bitten into, or if you want to serve them up fancy, all they need is some salt, pepper and a splash of olive oil. In the pickie below 4 varieties ready for the eating, slavering from left to right they are green zebra (a dark green with yellow ribs), black Russian ( a deep browny red), one i was told was called a queen lime but I think is actually a yellow valencia, and oxheart.
Ah, but what makes a tomato an heirloom, you ask. Well, the bottom line is that they have to be open-pollinated, that is, they can't be hybrids. Past that, there are additional interpretations. Some go by the age of the cultivar, with some going for seeds that have to be over 100 years old, others saying 50, and others picking 1945 being the rough date for widespread use of hybrids in industrial agriculture. Others say a true heirloom is a cultivar that has been nurtured, selected, and handed down from one family member over many generations. I got this info from http://www.greenmarketrecipes.com/tomatoes/types_of_heirloom_tomatoes.htm where you can also see pics of the whole fruit and many more varieties.
Ah, but what makes a tomato an heirloom, you ask. Well, the bottom line is that they have to be open-pollinated, that is, they can't be hybrids. Past that, there are additional interpretations. Some go by the age of the cultivar, with some going for seeds that have to be over 100 years old, others saying 50, and others picking 1945 being the rough date for widespread use of hybrids in industrial agriculture. Others say a true heirloom is a cultivar that has been nurtured, selected, and handed down from one family member over many generations. I got this info from http://www.greenmarketrecipes.com/tomatoes/types_of_heirloom_tomatoes.htm where you can also see pics of the whole fruit and many more varieties.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Vanilla Slice
My mate Craig Johnston emailed me from Alice Springs in Central Australia to tell me he had just eaten the best vanilla slice in Australia. My first thought was 'How is he defining best' as any kid growing up in Australia over the last, oh, at least 40 years will have eaten many a vanilla slice from a school tuck shop, the local pie and cake shop, or baked by a female family relative (and perhaps in some instances a male family relative) and will have different views on what makes for 'the best'.
For those of you unfamiliar with a vanilla slice, it's a sandwich of flaky pastry around a slab of vanilla custard (with colour variation from pale yellow through to lurid buttercup), with, in my preferred version, passionfruit icing, though there are those who have a vanilla icing as well (see the picture below). The pleasure of it for me was the contrast between the crispness and crumbling of the pastry, the mellow milky vanilla of the custard which invariably squooshed out the side of the slice when you bit into it so you had to juggle your mouth and tongue around the extruding custard and slurp it into your mouth as you bit or else lick it off your fingers post the bite, and the sharp sugariness of the passionfruit icing dotted with seeds which would give another satisfying crunch when bitten.
My foodie brain by this time was in overdrive pondering the question of the origin of this Australian standard biscuit. I use the term 'biscuit' here advisedly, having had recourse to that brilliant source of knowledge about many things technical - no, not Wikipedia, but QI (Quite Interesting) the tv panel show hosted by Stephen Fry which has over the last couple of years answered questions and corrected facts for me that I hadn't even got around to asking but am much the better for now knowing. One one episode, having had a side-splittingly funny discussion on 'digestive biscuits' Fry posed the question what technically is the difference between a cake and a biscuit, to which the fascinating answer is that when they go stale, a cake goes hard and a biscuit goes soft, and as anyone can tell you who has left a vanilla slice uneaten long enough, the pastry on it certainly goes softer as it sits dejected for lack of fulfilling its purpose in life. [Here's the link to the discussion on QI] As further justification for this nomenclature of the vanilla slice as a biscuit I offer the placing of what recipes I for vanilla slice or indeed any slice I did find in my early Australian cookbooks in the section for Biscuits (and Slices sometimes) and never in Cakes.
I digress.
The oldest source in my collection where the elements of a vanilla slice are described and recipes given is
The Goulburn Cookery Book (1899) compiled by Mrs William Forster (Jean) Rutledge. However, while she gives recipes separately for Vanilla Cream, for which you make a thick custard then add whipped cream, and vanilla essence and then set, or you can use a vanilla bean while making the custard, a Passionfruit Glaze using icing sugar and passionfruit juice, and recipes for Puff Paste and Flaky Pastry, there is sadly no recipe where the three elements are put together into a proto vanilla slice.
The Kingswood Cookery Book by of H F Wicken (originally published in 1888 and of which I have a sixth edition with no date of publication) first in 1888) has a recipe for vanilla custard pots and for a date sandwich which is made with two pieces of pastry between which you put dates prior to baking.
The Kookaburra Cookery Book (1915) from The Lady Victoria Buxton Girl's Club, Adelaide has a recipe for vanilla fingers, but these are basically a biscuit with vanilla flavouring.
In the Sunday Times (Perth, WA) Sunday 16th July 1911), Miss L. Paterson, of "Coolinga," Servetus-Street, W. Clare, is awarded an Honourble Mention in the recipe competition for her
Vanilla Slices (excellent)
Beat 6 eggs with a cup of sugar until light and frothing ; by degrees sift in two cups of flour mixed with two tea- spoons of cream of tartar, and one tea- spoon of carbonate of soda. When well raised add about a tablespoonful of melted butter and vanilla flavoring to taste. Bake in two square tins well buttered, for 15 to 20 minutes ; turn out, and when cold spread over cake with whipped cream, flavored with vanilla flavoring ; put the one cake on top and cut into slices. Ice each one for boiled icing. Very nice for afternoon tea..
So, we are getting warmer in our search now. We have a filling that is vanilla flavoured (albeit whipped cream) being placed between two layers of pastry, cut into slices and finished off with a boiled icing.
The Green and Gold Cookery Book (1923?) has a recipe that puts a custard between to pieces of pastry, but in this case it is a pineapple custard, and the custard is placed between the pastry before the whole is baked and there is no icing.
My collection is a bit thin over the 20's and 30s, but when I hit the Cookery Book (1938) of the Electrical Association for Women (Australia) Sydney, my heart did a little skip.
Vanilla Slices
1/4 lb butter, 1/2 lb flour, yolk of egg, pinch of salt, enough water to mix, vanilla essence.
Rub butter into sifted flour and salt, mix with egg, vanilla, and enough water to make a stiff mixture. Roll out two or three times, cut in pieces, and bake at 450 degrees, for 12 to 15 minutes. When cold, join together with custard, and ice on top.
But but but...What kind of custard and what kind of icing. Damn those secret women's business recipe books where a certain quantum of knowledge is understood so the barest instructions will be understandable to the woman cook!
I was now desperate. I had hoped that vanilla slices would be of relative antiquity in Australian household baking and here I was approaching the half way point in the last century, a bare two dozen years away from my first vanilla slice, and it didn't look like anyone was going to bring all the elements together in something definitive.
To the rescue came, who else, the Country Women's Association. In The CWA Cookery Book and Household Hints (1941) I found the following/
Vanilla Slices
1 oz castor sugar
1/2 pint milk
1 teaspoon butter
puff pastry
1/2 oz flour
1 egg or 2 yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
water icing
chopped nuts
Roll the prepared pastry to 1/8 in. thickness. Cut into oblongs 1 3/4 x 4 in. Bake on a baking sheet in a quick oven till pastry is fully risen. Reduce heat and finish baking. Cool on a cake rack. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in sugar and flour, and take pan to side of fire. Stir in the milk, a teaspoon at at time and beat the mixture till smooth. Return to the fire and cook, stirring constantly for 3 or 4 minutes, then draw again to the side of fire, and stir in the well-beaten egg and vanilla. Stand over a pan of boiling water, and cook for a few minutes, then leave till cool. Put between the pastry, spread the tops with water icing (some may have coloured icing), and sprinkle with chopped nuts.
So close, but failed to finish at the gallop in the last stages. No passionfruit icing. Indeed, no vanilla icing either. Now, I grant you, there are some who told me of recalling vanilla slices in their tuck shops with pink icing. So I have to be catholic and accept these slices into the fold. In which case to the CWA here in 1941 would go if not the winner's crown of lemon scented gum, perhaps the third placed crown of scribbly gum or stringybark.
I award the mountain ash wreath for second closest to my vision to Wynwode Reid in New Australian Cookery Illustrated (1950).
Vanilla Slices
4 oz flaky pastry
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 dessertspoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 very heaped dessertspoon cornflour
Roll out the pasty into two thin sheets of equal size. Prick them all over and bake until crisp and cooked through. Blend the cornflour with the milk and sugar and stir over low heat until boiled and thick. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and beaten egg. Spread between the pastry, ice the top with soft vanilla icing and cut into squares with a sharp knife.
Now for many, my ruling here will be controversial. Certainly the good folk of the Victorian town of Ouyen would not cavil were I to award the coveted lemon scented gum winner's wreath to Wynwode. Ouyen holds holds The Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph annually, the origin of which you can read at A Slice of Country Life, on the Australian Traveller website. The picture below is of the 2010 'professional' winning entry. And yes, it is finished with vanilla icing. You can see more images of the 2010 Triumph, including both the amateur and professional entries at the Ouyen website.
The 2010 winning professional vanilla slice from the Ouyen Great Vanilla Slice Triumph. Note the LACK of passionfruit icing!
http://www.murrayriver.com.au/images/event/2011/3/583/vanilla_slices-medium.jpg
But I am going to stick to my dream - to find the first written record in an Australian cook book of a vanilla slice with passionfruit icing. And so the lemon scented gum wreath goes to...
T. Crocker in the Taree West Cookbook (no date but likely to be in the late 1990s or early 2000s).
Vanilla Custard Slice
3 sheets frozen puff pastry
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cornflour
2/3 cup custard powder
4 cups milk or skim milk
50g margarine
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 egg yolks
Icing:
2 cups icing sugar mixture
3 dessertspoons passionfruit pulp (or 1/3 tin)
Method:
1. Join pastry sheets (1 1/2) for top, on a baking tray, slit pastry with knife. Bake in a hot oven 10 minutes until golden brown. While still hot flatten the pastry with another cake tin then repeat with the remaining 1 1/2 sheets for base.
2. Combine sugar, cornflour and custard powder - blend with a little milk until smooth. Add remaining mils and the margarine. Heat and stir mixture until the custard boils (have the hand held electric beater ready in case mixture starts to form lumps). Removed [sic] from heat, add the vanilla and beaten egg yolks and return to stove. (If mixture does not boil it tastes floury). As soon as the mixture has boiled pour it out onto one pastry sheet and place the other on top (flat side up). Put the passionfrut icing or pink lemon flavoured icing on top of the pastry and let set overnight before cutting into squares.
Now it was time for me to make my own vanilla slice. I wanted so much to make T. Crocker's, but I baulked at the use of custard powder. I wanted the best of the old and the new - real custard, passionfruit icing, and, being an abject failure at an earlier attempt at puff pastry, pre-made pastry. I gave in and Googled and came up with this on taste.com.au
Vanilla slice with passionfruit icing
Ingredients
• 2 sheets (25cm x 25cm) ready rolled frozen puff pastry, thawed
• Melted butter, to grease
• 750ml (3 cups) milk
• 375ml (1 1/2 cups) thickened cream
• 8 egg yolks
• 220g (1 cup) caster sugar
• 50g (1/3 cup) plain flour
• 35g (1/4 cup) cornflour
• 50g butter, chopped
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 230g (1 1/2 cups) pure icing sugar, sifted
• 2 tbs canned passionfruit in syrup (John West brand)
Method
1. Preheat oven to 220°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Place 1 pastry sheet onto each lined tray. Bake in preheated oven, swapping trays halfway through cooking, for 20 minutes or until pastry puffs and browns. Remove from the oven. Cover pastry with a clean tea towel and use your hands to gently push the pastry down to flatten. Set aside for 15 minutes to cool.
2. Brush 23cm (base measurement) square slab pan with butter to lightly grease. Line base and sides with foil. Place 1 pastry sheet, flat-side down, in base of prepared pan.
3. Meanwhile, heat milk and cream in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat until mixture just comes to the boil. Combine egg yolks, sugar, flour and cornflour in a heatproof bowl. Whisk until thick and pale. Gradually stir hot milk mixture into egg mixture. Place in a clean saucepan over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, for 5 minutes or until custard comes to the boil and thickens. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla essence until combined. Pour over pastry and place remaining pastry flat-side (unpressed side) up on top. Place in fridge for 1 hour or until custard sets.
4. Place icing sugar and passionfruit in large bowl and stir until smooth and glossy. Turn slice out onto a large chopping board and remove the foil. Spread icing over the top of the slice with the back of a spoon. Set aside for 20 minutes or until icing is set. Use a serrated knife to cut the vanilla slice into 16 pieces.
And here's what it looked like. Kinda thin on the custard, but the pastry was wonderfully flaky, the passionfruit icing was made with passionfruit pulp from the vine growing in our footpath garden, and the custard was a satisfying yellow, just wobbly/firm and it got rave reviews from my dinner companions on the night.
I may well head down to Ouyen this September and enter the comp.
So, I put the call out to foodie friends of mine to see what criteria they would use to judge 'the best' vanilla slice. Craig's criterion for 'the best' was straightforward - the custard had to wobble sufficiently. Kerry Boyne said 'It’s everything – the custard (not too firm in consistency), the icing (some passionfruit tang, not just sugar-sweet), the pastry – and the right colour for the custard and the icing. Please, no fluoro yellows!'. Roberta Muir wants "Crisp pastry and creamy rather than jelly-like vanilla cream'.
For those of you unfamiliar with a vanilla slice, it's a sandwich of flaky pastry around a slab of vanilla custard (with colour variation from pale yellow through to lurid buttercup), with, in my preferred version, passionfruit icing, though there are those who have a vanilla icing as well (see the picture below). The pleasure of it for me was the contrast between the crispness and crumbling of the pastry, the mellow milky vanilla of the custard which invariably squooshed out the side of the slice when you bit into it so you had to juggle your mouth and tongue around the extruding custard and slurp it into your mouth as you bit or else lick it off your fingers post the bite, and the sharp sugariness of the passionfruit icing dotted with seeds which would give another satisfying crunch when bitten.
My foodie brain by this time was in overdrive pondering the question of the origin of this Australian standard biscuit. I use the term 'biscuit' here advisedly, having had recourse to that brilliant source of knowledge about many things technical - no, not Wikipedia, but QI (Quite Interesting) the tv panel show hosted by Stephen Fry which has over the last couple of years answered questions and corrected facts for me that I hadn't even got around to asking but am much the better for now knowing. One one episode, having had a side-splittingly funny discussion on 'digestive biscuits' Fry posed the question what technically is the difference between a cake and a biscuit, to which the fascinating answer is that when they go stale, a cake goes hard and a biscuit goes soft, and as anyone can tell you who has left a vanilla slice uneaten long enough, the pastry on it certainly goes softer as it sits dejected for lack of fulfilling its purpose in life. [Here's the link to the discussion on QI] As further justification for this nomenclature of the vanilla slice as a biscuit I offer the placing of what recipes I for vanilla slice or indeed any slice I did find in my early Australian cookbooks in the section for Biscuits (and Slices sometimes) and never in Cakes.
I digress.
The oldest source in my collection where the elements of a vanilla slice are described and recipes given is
The Goulburn Cookery Book (1899) compiled by Mrs William Forster (Jean) Rutledge. However, while she gives recipes separately for Vanilla Cream, for which you make a thick custard then add whipped cream, and vanilla essence and then set, or you can use a vanilla bean while making the custard, a Passionfruit Glaze using icing sugar and passionfruit juice, and recipes for Puff Paste and Flaky Pastry, there is sadly no recipe where the three elements are put together into a proto vanilla slice.
The Kingswood Cookery Book by of H F Wicken (originally published in 1888 and of which I have a sixth edition with no date of publication) first in 1888) has a recipe for vanilla custard pots and for a date sandwich which is made with two pieces of pastry between which you put dates prior to baking.
The Kookaburra Cookery Book (1915) from The Lady Victoria Buxton Girl's Club, Adelaide has a recipe for vanilla fingers, but these are basically a biscuit with vanilla flavouring.
In the Sunday Times (Perth, WA) Sunday 16th July 1911), Miss L. Paterson, of "Coolinga," Servetus-Street, W. Clare, is awarded an Honourble Mention in the recipe competition for her
Vanilla Slices (excellent)
Beat 6 eggs with a cup of sugar until light and frothing ; by degrees sift in two cups of flour mixed with two tea- spoons of cream of tartar, and one tea- spoon of carbonate of soda. When well raised add about a tablespoonful of melted butter and vanilla flavoring to taste. Bake in two square tins well buttered, for 15 to 20 minutes ; turn out, and when cold spread over cake with whipped cream, flavored with vanilla flavoring ; put the one cake on top and cut into slices. Ice each one for boiled icing. Very nice for afternoon tea..
So, we are getting warmer in our search now. We have a filling that is vanilla flavoured (albeit whipped cream) being placed between two layers of pastry, cut into slices and finished off with a boiled icing.
The Green and Gold Cookery Book (1923?) has a recipe that puts a custard between to pieces of pastry, but in this case it is a pineapple custard, and the custard is placed between the pastry before the whole is baked and there is no icing.
My collection is a bit thin over the 20's and 30s, but when I hit the Cookery Book (1938) of the Electrical Association for Women (Australia) Sydney, my heart did a little skip.
Vanilla Slices
1/4 lb butter, 1/2 lb flour, yolk of egg, pinch of salt, enough water to mix, vanilla essence.
Rub butter into sifted flour and salt, mix with egg, vanilla, and enough water to make a stiff mixture. Roll out two or three times, cut in pieces, and bake at 450 degrees, for 12 to 15 minutes. When cold, join together with custard, and ice on top.
But but but...What kind of custard and what kind of icing. Damn those secret women's business recipe books where a certain quantum of knowledge is understood so the barest instructions will be understandable to the woman cook!
I was now desperate. I had hoped that vanilla slices would be of relative antiquity in Australian household baking and here I was approaching the half way point in the last century, a bare two dozen years away from my first vanilla slice, and it didn't look like anyone was going to bring all the elements together in something definitive.
To the rescue came, who else, the Country Women's Association. In The CWA Cookery Book and Household Hints (1941) I found the following/
Vanilla Slices
1 oz castor sugar
1/2 pint milk
1 teaspoon butter
puff pastry
1/2 oz flour
1 egg or 2 yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
water icing
chopped nuts
Roll the prepared pastry to 1/8 in. thickness. Cut into oblongs 1 3/4 x 4 in. Bake on a baking sheet in a quick oven till pastry is fully risen. Reduce heat and finish baking. Cool on a cake rack. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in sugar and flour, and take pan to side of fire. Stir in the milk, a teaspoon at at time and beat the mixture till smooth. Return to the fire and cook, stirring constantly for 3 or 4 minutes, then draw again to the side of fire, and stir in the well-beaten egg and vanilla. Stand over a pan of boiling water, and cook for a few minutes, then leave till cool. Put between the pastry, spread the tops with water icing (some may have coloured icing), and sprinkle with chopped nuts.
So close, but failed to finish at the gallop in the last stages. No passionfruit icing. Indeed, no vanilla icing either. Now, I grant you, there are some who told me of recalling vanilla slices in their tuck shops with pink icing. So I have to be catholic and accept these slices into the fold. In which case to the CWA here in 1941 would go if not the winner's crown of lemon scented gum, perhaps the third placed crown of scribbly gum or stringybark.
I award the mountain ash wreath for second closest to my vision to Wynwode Reid in New Australian Cookery Illustrated (1950).
Vanilla Slices
4 oz flaky pastry
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 dessertspoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 very heaped dessertspoon cornflour
Roll out the pasty into two thin sheets of equal size. Prick them all over and bake until crisp and cooked through. Blend the cornflour with the milk and sugar and stir over low heat until boiled and thick. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and beaten egg. Spread between the pastry, ice the top with soft vanilla icing and cut into squares with a sharp knife.
Now for many, my ruling here will be controversial. Certainly the good folk of the Victorian town of Ouyen would not cavil were I to award the coveted lemon scented gum winner's wreath to Wynwode. Ouyen holds holds The Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph annually, the origin of which you can read at A Slice of Country Life, on the Australian Traveller website. The picture below is of the 2010 'professional' winning entry. And yes, it is finished with vanilla icing. You can see more images of the 2010 Triumph, including both the amateur and professional entries at the Ouyen website.
The 2010 winning professional vanilla slice from the Ouyen Great Vanilla Slice Triumph. Note the LACK of passionfruit icing!
http://www.murrayriver.com.au/images/event/2011/3/583/vanilla_slices-medium.jpg
But I am going to stick to my dream - to find the first written record in an Australian cook book of a vanilla slice with passionfruit icing. And so the lemon scented gum wreath goes to...
T. Crocker in the Taree West Cookbook (no date but likely to be in the late 1990s or early 2000s).
Vanilla Custard Slice
3 sheets frozen puff pastry
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cornflour
2/3 cup custard powder
4 cups milk or skim milk
50g margarine
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 egg yolks
Icing:
2 cups icing sugar mixture
3 dessertspoons passionfruit pulp (or 1/3 tin)
Method:
1. Join pastry sheets (1 1/2) for top, on a baking tray, slit pastry with knife. Bake in a hot oven 10 minutes until golden brown. While still hot flatten the pastry with another cake tin then repeat with the remaining 1 1/2 sheets for base.
2. Combine sugar, cornflour and custard powder - blend with a little milk until smooth. Add remaining mils and the margarine. Heat and stir mixture until the custard boils (have the hand held electric beater ready in case mixture starts to form lumps). Removed [sic] from heat, add the vanilla and beaten egg yolks and return to stove. (If mixture does not boil it tastes floury). As soon as the mixture has boiled pour it out onto one pastry sheet and place the other on top (flat side up). Put the passionfrut icing or pink lemon flavoured icing on top of the pastry and let set overnight before cutting into squares.
Now it was time for me to make my own vanilla slice. I wanted so much to make T. Crocker's, but I baulked at the use of custard powder. I wanted the best of the old and the new - real custard, passionfruit icing, and, being an abject failure at an earlier attempt at puff pastry, pre-made pastry. I gave in and Googled and came up with this on taste.com.au
Vanilla slice with passionfruit icing
Ingredients
• 2 sheets (25cm x 25cm) ready rolled frozen puff pastry, thawed
• Melted butter, to grease
• 750ml (3 cups) milk
• 375ml (1 1/2 cups) thickened cream
• 8 egg yolks
• 220g (1 cup) caster sugar
• 50g (1/3 cup) plain flour
• 35g (1/4 cup) cornflour
• 50g butter, chopped
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 230g (1 1/2 cups) pure icing sugar, sifted
• 2 tbs canned passionfruit in syrup (John West brand)
Method
1. Preheat oven to 220°C. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Place 1 pastry sheet onto each lined tray. Bake in preheated oven, swapping trays halfway through cooking, for 20 minutes or until pastry puffs and browns. Remove from the oven. Cover pastry with a clean tea towel and use your hands to gently push the pastry down to flatten. Set aside for 15 minutes to cool.
2. Brush 23cm (base measurement) square slab pan with butter to lightly grease. Line base and sides with foil. Place 1 pastry sheet, flat-side down, in base of prepared pan.
3. Meanwhile, heat milk and cream in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat until mixture just comes to the boil. Combine egg yolks, sugar, flour and cornflour in a heatproof bowl. Whisk until thick and pale. Gradually stir hot milk mixture into egg mixture. Place in a clean saucepan over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, for 5 minutes or until custard comes to the boil and thickens. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla essence until combined. Pour over pastry and place remaining pastry flat-side (unpressed side) up on top. Place in fridge for 1 hour or until custard sets.
4. Place icing sugar and passionfruit in large bowl and stir until smooth and glossy. Turn slice out onto a large chopping board and remove the foil. Spread icing over the top of the slice with the back of a spoon. Set aside for 20 minutes or until icing is set. Use a serrated knife to cut the vanilla slice into 16 pieces.
And here's what it looked like. Kinda thin on the custard, but the pastry was wonderfully flaky, the passionfruit icing was made with passionfruit pulp from the vine growing in our footpath garden, and the custard was a satisfying yellow, just wobbly/firm and it got rave reviews from my dinner companions on the night.
I may well head down to Ouyen this September and enter the comp.
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