Food History

I promised you a recipe.

I can’t make up my mind which country it should be from, and the suggestions, frankly, didn’t help. Each and every comment suggested a different land. In the end, I opened the book at random once, twice and three times (it was more fun than opening it simply the once) and I found myself in the USA. The USA, you’ll remember, is noted for variation in the realm of food. Recipe number 15 is extraordinarily varied (I say this with a very light overlay of sarcasm), being called “New England Boiled Dinner.” Good winter fare. Obviously I need to try it. It’s very like the kosher corned beef I ate as a child, except for the beet and the MSG and the sad lack of celery.

15. New England Boiled Dinner

Ingredients:
4 pounds corned beef
1 head cabbage
6 carrots
6 onions
6 white turnips
8 potatoes
8 beets
Salt and pepper to taste
A dash of monosodium glutamate

Method:

Cover meat with cold water; simmer for 3 hours.. Prepare vegetable, cutting turnips into quarters and cabbage into eighths. Cook beets in boiling water. Add remaining vegetables to meat and cook until tender. Saesoning with salt, peper and a dash of monosium glutamate. Drain and serve vegetable on plate with meat.

Now your appetites have been whetted, if you want a second recipe from this book, just say and it can be my post for tomorrow. I’m feeling generous.

New England corned beef, recipe, food history, Gas Cookery book

I’ve been having so much fun with this blog that I’ve decided it’s time to share some of the pleasure in writing about food.

Send me a few hundred words telling a food history story and you could win a great prize. I’m not talking wider food history here: I want family stories. They can be serious or funny or sad. With each story I want at least one recipe.

You can enter as many times as you like, but each person can only win one prize. If I really adore entries and they don’t win one of the three terrific prizes donated by Suz’s Space, I reserve the right to award an ebook to show that the stories were special or the recipes delectable, even if they didn’t win (I will also give judges that option).

I will blog entries. Copyright for all stories remains with you, but you have to be willing to let your stories remain on my blog - if they’re stories that you don’t want to be read, then please don’t send them.

Email all stories/recipes to me (using the contact button on the right of this page) by 1 August. I will finish blogging all the stories/recipes by 15 August and the judges will decide on the three best after this. Make your recipes mouthwatering and your stories delicious and you could win one of the three prizes that Suz’s Space has kindly donated (Suz has also donated the postage - visit her online shop - she has some cool stuff!).

What can you win?

1st Prize
A set of 6 serviettes and 6 placemats
ABC Delicious Magazine - Issue 25 March 2004
ABC Delicious Magazine - Issue 22 November 2003

2nd Prize
Set of non-stick kitchen implements
Super Food Ideas - Issue 60 June 2005
Super Food Ideas - Issue 45 February 2004

3rd Prize
Australian Gourmet Traveller
1 Apron (choice of 4 colours)

Who will be judging your timeless prose and mouthwatering recipes?

Suz from Suz’s Space (of course)
Farley from Wine Outlook
Jaime from The New Australian and Fiction Scribe (“Australia made me a foodie� she says – now she has to prove it)
Dave from Pop Buzz UK
Allison from Reality on Bravo

I can’t wait to read your stories!

food history, competition, family stories, Wine Outloook, Suz’s Space, Fiction Scribe, Pop Buzz UK, Reality on Bravo, recipes

Not all Jewish cooking is kosher. It depends very much on the level and nature of Jewish identity of the cook, on the community she/he lives in, on the family cultural identity (which might be the same as the family religious identity, but then it might not) and other factors.

Take, for instance, this recipe from my grandmother’s little notebook. It has bacon. There’s no way of hiding it: there’s bacon in the recipe.

My father’s family was just as Jewish as my mother’s …. except in the small matter of the food laws.

The question becomes (for my generation and the next one) do we adhere to the higher level of kashruth we were brought up with and lose a whole segment of our family cooking tradition, or do we eat bacon? What has happened is that we’ve lost those recipes from our cooking, because the family members interested in maintaining the food laws and the family members who care about the heritage overlap quite considerably. (I’m spared the agonising decision, being allergic to fish.)

If anyone makes herring roes, I’d really like to know what it tastes like.

Herring Roes

1 tin herring roes
bacon

Wrap bacon round the roes. Grill till bacon is thoroughly heated & cooked. Place on rounds of toast or fried bread.

food history, bacon, Jewish cooking, recipe

I’ve borrowed Llyn’s computer to let you know what a perfectly foodie weekend I have had. Tomorrow I’ll be home and Tuesday I’ll launch the competition, but today my friends and I have visited Newtown and various shops (lunch was Turkish bread with baba ganush, carrot dip, chummous and tea) and two major cemeteries and at least one significant church. The ‘at least’ refers to the fact that we only went inside one church. I’ll post about our graveyard visit (and how to see ghosts in Newtown) on my my other blog tomorrow. Tonight I want to tell you about yesterday.

Sydney is full of suburban strips of shops. This is where you can find the most fascinating little places for food. Yesterday, for instance, we dropped into a number of places in Rozelle and Five Dock. Our excursion included two gourmet chocolate shops, a patisserie, an Italian supermarket and Herbie’s. Herbie’s is one of Australia’s best herb and spice specialist shops, run by the inimitable Ian Hemphill. Llyn gave me a belated birthday present of Ian’s book (about which I might have to blog someday) and Ian himself has promised to be interviewed for us. That will probably happen later in July. Ian and I chatted about all sorts of things, from Roman tastebuds to how to spice early nineteenth century dishes correctly.

We ate those heritage carrots for dinner. The white carrot has a higher sugar content than the coloured ones, but is rather bland. The purple one sliced to orange and tasted like the orange ones ie deliciously carrotty. Llyn and I think that if we ever obtain white carrots again, we might try them caramelised and make use of that sugar.

I have carefully packed samples from the chocolate shop and my wonderful new book. With them I packed new memories of the harbour and the bridges, of old tombs and perfect Gothic arches, and of lots of happy moments with friends who are equally food-addicted. I didn’t pack the sickle that we bought at Rozelle markets - it won’t fit in my backpack. I learned how to use it, though, and we’ll find a way to get it to Canberra soon, I hope.

Now you know why my blog entries have been short for a couple of days. I wrote them in advance and posted them on time-delay. I’m back to real life now, though, and life is about to get rather exciting, with interview and competition and all that chocolate and book in my backpack.

Native mint is a prostanthera, and not a mint at all.

It’s another of my favourite Australian native plants. My favourite variety smells and tastes like a mint that has had a faint overdose of Australia, gum nutty and fragrant. It makes a delicious herb tea, especially when added to the “realâ€? mints, and can be substituted for mint in most recipes. It can grow as everything from a ground plant to a tree, but its flowers always look purple and mint-like and its smell is always menthol.

I am told that not all varieties are equally edible, so use a bit of discretion in sampling.