I have New Scientist No 2857, March 24, 2012 to thank, I guess, for bringing to my attention LFTB, that's lean finely textured beef. This matter, apparently delightfully and it would appear accurately called 'pink slime' is an additive to a range of meat products, and consists of 'slaughterhouse trimmings separated from fat and sterilised using ammonia'.

NS reports that the US Department of Agriculture has agreed to 'offer schools food without LFTB' post a 235,970 signature petition over March 2012.

What fascinates me about the story is that the petition was apparently based on 'microbiologists' concerns, and incidents of Escheria coli and Salmonella contamination - all of which were intercepted before reaching customers'. Why does this fascinate? Because I would have hoped that those 235,970 petitioners had petitioned for the removal of this muck from school canteens on the basis that it was repulsive crap to be feeding kids despite the manufacturer apparently claiming that LFTB is '94 to 97 per cent lean beef, with similar nutritional value to 90 per cent lean ground beef''.

I am all for eating offal not awful.

Figs

My first sight of a fresh fig was in the infamous scene in Ken Russell's film of DH Lawrence's Women in Love when Rupert Birkin demonstrates how to break into one with your thumbs, pull the cheeks created apart and then suck the flesh out with you lips alluding in that Lawrencian way to the sexual imagery of the fig as vagina. For an 17 year old who had skipped school to see the film, that scene was as erotic as it was intended to be, never mind that this particular 17 year old was (undeclared to himself) homosexual.

It wasn't until years later that I came across my first fruiting fig tree in the backyard of one of the share houses of my university days. The tree produced a lot of green figs which birds had a great time pecking into and so few got anywhere near ripe and those that did were underwhelming.

Since then I've had many a fresh fig via Italian fruit shops first and then more widely as they were popularised. Charlie, my Calabrian neighbour across the road, often brings some across in season from the tree in his front yard. I went fig and chestnut picking on one of the bus trips he organises annually for the Italian and Portuguese communities in Leichhardt and Petersham. You can read about that trip at Not That Old Chestnut (not my choice of title, it was Andrew Wood's, editor of the much missed Divine magazine in which the article was printed).

All this by way of saying that it's fig season again, and I have had my first by way of a delectable fig and ricotta brioche from Black Star Pastry at the Newtown end of Australia Street. The sugary sweetness of the fig and brioche are nicely balanced by the milky sweetness of the ricotta and cut into by the sesame and poppy seeds on the brioche. The mouth feel is unctuous, the ripeness of the fig, the creaminess of the ricotta and the light almost sponge-ness of the brioche combining smoothly on the palate. Visually it seduces, the golds of the brioche echoing the khaki/bronze of the skin and core of the fig, the flecks of sesame and poppy like fig seeds grown fat and burst from their pink fleshy bed, the white of the ricotta seeming to have leached out of the band of white inner flesh of the fig. It's disingenuously simple in its ingredients and its execution.

Hot Mumma

The title of this blog I owe to my sis-in-law and comes from gin being called 'mother's milk' in the Hogarthian days. The 'hot' part needs a little more explaining.

When traveling through India some years ago, Marg, Marilyn and I were in a dive of a hotel in Aurangabad pre-excursioning to the cave temples of Ajunta. Attracted by its name which involved the word Garden and what seemed a reasonable description of a cheapish place in the Lonely Planet at the time, we booked in not knowing it was the kind of hotel that Indian commercial travellers frequented, a fact not recorded in said guidebook, but clearly the reason for the aghast looks of the reception staff when we arrived late at night and cheerfully proceeded to book in. We lasted on night, I think, post which we hastened to the Taj hotel there, much to the relief, I must say, of our chaffeur who clearly was not happy with his accommodation that night either and was definitely up about spending the next few nights with his mates at the Taj digs.

To celebrate our good fortune in finding and still perturbed by the former nights experience, though somewhat blissed out post the caves, when settled into the splendid new surrounds we decided to go wild and put a split green chili into each glass of our regular gin (drink of choice at the time). We let it steep for or a minute or two and then had what I still recall as the best neat gin I have ever had  - no jokes about the effect of several gins on recollection of anything, though I confess Marg and Marilyn had an extended fest of giggles in the restaurant later.

Having remembered to by my two bottles of duty free Bombay Sapphire recently, I couldn't resist having a welcome-home-glass (all right, it was three, and your point is?) and having been chili starved most of the time in PNG from whence I as returning (bar a brilliant biriyani at the Lamana Hotel in Port Morseby over which I sprinkled a tingling hot sliced green chili courtesy of the kitchen) I recalled I had some fresh green chilis in the fridge and had a highly satisfying sozzle.

I was intrigued to see if others had also self-discovered the delights of gin and chili, never one to think I could be particularly original in cocktail combos. There's quite a nice recipe for Chili Lime and Gin Marinated Oysters which I am very much going to try; ditto the Gin and Chili Infused Grapefruit Drink which is apparently a 'spiced up version of a greyhound cocktail' which usually is just gin and grapefruit juice and the Gin and Chili Pepper Martini and the Hair of the Dog Cocktail that is the gin alternative to a Bloody Mary.

I intend now to go the next step and put a couple of chillies into a whole bottle of gin - sooooo time-saving!

Disgorged wine

Friends Carol and Julie gave us a prezzie of a wine for lending the ute to them for moving prior to having major renos done on their house. It was a Tamburlaine 2001 Late Disgorged Cabernet Sauvignon, which, apart from tasting damn fine, got me totally intrigued by what on earth anyone was doing disgorging a wine and then bottling it and having the guts to then sell it. I mean, the last disgorgement of wine I did was after a particularly careless session a couple of weeks ago when too much of a good time with old mates led to a failure to drink enough hibiscus tea to counter the effects of the several bottles of red gorged during the evening.

Happily, I found that disgorging wine in the vigneron world is a much less disturbing process. The term 'late-disgorged' is English for récemment dégorgé, indicating a wine that has been kept on its lees for much longer than usual (up to as much as ten years) between bottling and disgorging. The wine feeds off its lees throughout this time, acquiring great complexity, depth and richness. The sharp intake of oxygen when the wine is finally disgorged (ie the temporary 'bottling cork' is pulled and replaced with a permanent Champagne cork, ready for shipping) adds a welcome note of freshness that highlights the wine's complexity.'

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_late_disgorged_in_champagne#ixzz1jsxXGh6k

Which still leaves me a tad puzzled as my pocket Oxford French dictionary gives récemment as meaning recently which is not what the wine is, disgorged recently, that is. Ah well, another of those little linguistic licenses one lives with I suppose.

Flat earthers

Okay, not really, but gee, who knew about flat peaches. Well apparently the Chinese have for centuries, as I guess they would as China is the original home of peaches. The rest of the world has known about them for yonks on the evidence of Google searches (they were the 2009 London Summer 'most fashionable culinary accessory' apparently and have been grown in the US since 1869 or earlier depending on who is spruiking them). I totally missed their first appearance in Oz  but they are certainly making the running this Summer with a write up in The Land and a dessert  recipe in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Living section on 12th January (sorry vegans, it uses eggs).

Colleen, who brought them to my attention, called them squashed peaches and I have to say I quite like that in preference to 'flat' or 'doughnut', especially as they are being touted as great to fit into kid's lunchboxes and I love the vision of them being created by some frustrated Chinese mum who one day lucked on a big old round peach that didn't go kerblewy when she pushed the lid down on it to get it to fit into said item of schoolkids accessories.

I can attest post test that they are indeed sweeter and less fuzzy than your general run of peach, and the cuteness factor is high. That doesn't excuse the Oz company behind their Summer push marketing them as Taste Buddies. Boy did they miss the opportunity to be Oz AND to rhyme!

Brooder and its bretheren

No Christmas morning at the van Reyk family table in Sri Lanka was complete without the cutting, buttering and consuming of brooder. This, like frikadells, seems to be a left over from the early days of the Dutch in Sri Lanka. The name is variously spelt broeder (in Hilda Deutrom's Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book), breuder (in my grandmother Ada de la Harpe's cookery book), and brooder (in Chandra Dissanayke's Ceylon Cookery). I have opted for Dissanayake's as it's the closest to the Dutch word brood, meaning bread, which is what this dish is - well, cakey bread, based on a yeasted dough but with the sweetness of a sponge cake.

In our family it was always eaten with Edam cheese – and still is despite the sneers I get from the non-Burgher elements of the extended family when I put the Edam on the table.

In both Deutrom and Dissanayake the recipe for brooder is in the section on Dutch and Portuguese specialties, with Deutrom firmly declaring it for the Dutch. Now, the fascinating thing about this is that when I asked my Dutch friends whether this bread/cake is also made and eaten in the Netherlands at Christmas, they looked at me quite blankly. Neither of them knows of anything like this in the Dutch repertoire of breads/cakes. There is a Dutch Christmas relative called kerststol, though it shaped into a low round loaf, and there is also  let alone Christmas bread/cake. There is also the  tulband, so named for the fluted 'turban' shaped mould used to make it, which- yep, you guessed it – is the mould we use for brooder in Sri Lanka. But tulband is not reserved for festive occasions and I can't find any suggestion that it should be eaten with Edam. So naturally I wondered about other European cuisines that have something similar and of course recalled German stollen, which ticks most of the boxes except the turban shaped mould. There is also the Veronese pandoro though it is made in a star-shaped mould, doesn't use dried fruits and is dusted with icing sugar, and the Milanese panettone, which has the dried fruit but usually comes in a cupola shaped loaf and is sometimes eaten with mascarpone. Then you have the Polish babka (grandmother) which is the same basic dough baked in a turban mould with no dried fruits but in this case eaten at Easter where it's use of eggs allegedly celebrates the return to the usual diet after Lenten fasting. And finally there is the brioche, sort of a mini version of this form of cake/bread again without the dried fruit and eaten daily if not more often and which it would be mortal sin to accompany with anything more than a cup of strong black coffee or thick chocolate.

Brooder now takes its place as an evident fusion of these many styles of a basic idea. The recipe I use is adapted from my gran's cookery book.I have made it quite successfully with spelt flour, wholemeal and good old white wheat flour. The texture and taste vary; all yummy, though.

Ingredients
500gms plain flour
50 gms butter
baker's yeast
1 tsp sugar
water
6 egg yolks
250 gms caster sugar
125 gms currants or sultanas or raisins or a mixture of them

Method
Make the dough the night before. Then take as much yeast as is recommended for your particular yeast for making bread with 500 gms of flour (it can vary so read the packet or ask when you buy it), add the yeast and the sugar to a little hot water to get the yeast started. It will froth slightly. When it's bubbling happily, add this to the flour and mix in well. Now slowly add water and keep mixing until you have a lump of dough that lifts easily out of the bowl or off the board. Knead it for 15 minutes or so. Put it in a bowl, cover the bowl with a damp tea-towel and leave it in a warm place to rise overnight.

The next day, take the dough and add to it the butter, egg yolks and sugar. Add the first three yolks separately and mix in well each time. Then add the others also one at a time alternating with dollops of the caster sugar till it is all used up. What you will have now is a very thick wet doughy batter.

Butter a turban mould. Put a good sprinkle of whatever dried fruit you are using on the bottom. Squish some dried fruit against the sides of the mould, too. Pour in the batter. Sprinkle more of the dried fruit on top of the batter. If you like, and I do, you can mix some dried fruits into the batter, too.

Leave this in a warm place, the mould covered with a damp cloth, for 1 or 2 hours until it rises again (it won't rise as much as the dough did overnight).

Meanwhile, pre-heat your oven to very hot – around 220C.

When the dough has risen the second time, put the mould in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Check at that stage that the brooder is cooked by poking a bamboo skewer or similar into the dough. If it comes out clean, your brooder is ready. If it doesn't, give the brooder 10 – 15 minutes more. Putting some baking/greaseproof/brown paper on the top will reduce the likelihood of the dried fruit burning.

When it's cooked, take it out of the oven and leave it to cool in the mould. You should then be able to give the mould a good thump and have the brooder come cleanly out of it.

Resist all temptation to ice or otherwise muck around with the brooder! Just slice it up and have some butter and Edam or cheddar cheese to have it with. But you are allowed to make summer pudding with the left over brooder if you like, or indeed any of those bread pudding dishes.

What should a cooking show about a cuisine do?

I ask this question having watched the second episode of Peter Kuruvita's My Sri Lanka which again has been underwhelming, to me at least.

Why? I watch it clearly from the position of someone who is Sri Lankan, teaches Sri Lankan cooking, writes about it, cooks it, promotes it etc. I write from the position who in all of these tries to place the cuisine in its geographic and historic context, explaining how the cuisine developed, its influences over some 2000 years of formation of what it is today, with something of the politics of those influences so my listener, reader, student can understand what it takes to create a cuisine, who gains, who loses, what the effort is in producing its ingredients, its philosophy where it can be guessed at or is codified, all of this to deepen the pleasure of its consumption.

Kuruvita's program disappoints on all these levels. That may not be such a problem if the cuisine was well known or programmed within and inch of its liveliness, as say French or Italian is, years and years of exposition that have left little undisclosed about its origins and development. Sri Lankan cuisine is not at all like this; it is a road not just the less travelled but rarely taken at all. As the first national level mass media  program on the cuisine, at least to my knowledge, I had hoped that the program would inform and not just titivate with undeniable beauty of the backdrops against which he cooks and the exoticism of the vessels he uses (never described) or the ingredients (tonight he uses goroka but says not a word about what it is, what it does to the pork dish he makes, what else it is used for in the cuisine, other cuisines in which it is used - virtually no other, by the way), The show becomes about him and not the food.

He goes to a tea plantation and natters on about the 'lovely ladies' who are picking the tea and, having committed the first historic gaffe by asserting that tea has been grown in Sri Lanka for 'hundreds' of years when the first shipment of tea from the country happened as relatively recently as 1873, he fails to mention that all the pickers are Tamils, descendants of indentured workers brought by the British and generally employed under shocking conditions for most of that period, and who continue to live lives that are arduous and minimally economically rewarded, particularly under Singhala nationalism that continues to marginalise Tamils. There is an ugliness to this lauded loveliness that ought to be spoken about but which the program glosses over as it does so much of what makes this cuisine what it is.

Of course I will watch it again, because it does at least introduce people to some of the variety of the cuisine, but there is so much more it could do, and that I think a  cuisine program these days should do.