Food History

For no particular reason, I’m thinking about cakes. Cakes were important in the 1950s, but the presentation wasn’t always the same as ours today. My grandmother, for instance, would have used icing rather than ganache, and varied the sort of icing for the occasion and the cake. She would have filled her sponge cakes and then lightly dusted them with icing sugar for an elegant finish. Big formal cakes (for weddings, for example) had a layer of marzipan and then royal icing on top (as they usually do now) while everyday cakes would have had a simple sugar icing. Cake was a key part of the afternoon tea table. I’ll talk more about this another day (or many other days - there are almost infinite recipes and interesting information): today I’ll just give you some icing recipes from my grandmother’s fifties notebook.

Royal Icing

1 lb icing sugar, 2 whites eggs, 1 dessertspoon lemon juice; for piping add 1 more white of egg. Beat whites of eggs to a froth. Add to the sifted sugar and lemon juices. Stir until mixed and then beat well.

Almond Icing

½ lb icing sugar, ½ lb ground almonds, 1 egg, 1 dessertspoon of rose-water or lemon juice.

Rub sugar through ‘hair’ sieve and add almonds. Beat egg and add lemon juice. Mix with sugar with wooden spoon, then knead with hands till oil appears. Roll out to shape and size required.

Chocolate Icing

1 ½ cups icing sugar,
1 dessertspoonful cocoa
small piece lard on a knife
and 2 tablespoons cold water.

Put all ingredients into a basin and stir over hot water until smooth. The lard is used to give a nice gloss to the icing.

food history, recipes, icing, afternoon tea

The Conflux4 Regency Gothic Banquet is tonight. ‘Tonight’ is the date on this post, if I get the advance posting right. I’ll be enjoying the banquet, wearing pink and black and a spangled headdress, and I thought it was rather unfair that all the readers of this blog should entirely miss out. I know you’ll get all the recipes, starting next week, but you need to see a bit more than that, and a bit earlier, too. (more…)

The Regency Gothic banquet is tomorrow.

The menus are printed and the costumes are ready. Three different costumes, in fact, are spread around my lounge room, waiting for occupants to inhabit them. There is my dusky pink and embroidered black net. There is my houseguest’s silk and lace and there is a spare dress for an unknown woman.

Food, dress, what else can there be? There’s jewellery. I have one quite authentic-looking necklace that my houseguest is borrowing, because it matches her dress just perfectly. Blue lakh - lovely.

I’ll be wearing quite modern makeup, but in case you want to make your own rouge for an equivalent occasion, try safflower and talc.

I can’t think of anything else you need, unless it’s a ton of links to somehow see you safely through to tomorrow, when I give you the complete Regency Gothic banquet menu. Once the banquet is over and the recipes blogged, I’ll return to normal programming, promise. In fact, on Monday I’ll give you an introduction to a book that has not much to do with anything Regency. In the meantime, though, I’m excited.

I’m not the only one bubbling over. More and more people are reporting in and telling me about their costumes. About half the testing team have bought tickets (even several of the testing team from places well interstate) and will be seeing the product of all their labour. 4000 pages of recipes and tomorrow we find out what it tastes like when a professional chef takes over. Yes, I’m nervous.

What I really, really hope is that several of the people present have cameras and will let me blog pictures of the event and all its costumed glory.

While you wait, here are a few links to remind you of how this has all unfolded.

Today’s a difficult day for me (what with a virus and Conflux coming and far too many things happening at once), so I’m giving you something cheering. Not particularly wholesome, but cheering. It also fits what’s turned out to be my theme of the week – all those scones and related deliciousness. I thought you’d like some jam to put on your scones, in fact.

The first recipe uses something that’s fallen out of favour. Back in my grandmother’s day, there was always a jar of ginger in syrup lying around that someone had given as a present. The jar was often a pretty Chinese pot. Every bit of the contents of the jars were used, and this fig jam is just one of the ways of using up the sugar syrup the ginger was preserved in as well as the ginger itself. In the Middle Ages, bitter oranges were preserved in a similar syrup and the orange and syrup were both likewise popular (and likewise expensive).

In Australia ginger has become much more readily accessible and much more tender. The variety in the elegant jars was a bit stringier than we’re used to now and the flavour wasn’t quite the same.

Fig jam
4 lb figs
1 pt water
4 oz. Ginger syrup
4 lb sugar
1 cup vinegar

Stew figs and vinegar in the water until soft. Chop ginger, measure pulp, add 1 lb to a pint (sugar) boil till thick.

food history, ginger, fig jam, recipes

After yesterday’s post I thought maybe it was time to have a post about a foodstuff that has given much calm to many people for a very long time. You can tell I’m a tea-drinker, can’t you? It’s in the way I think about tea and the way I have at least six different varieties for different moods. Right now I’m drinking a Kenyan spiced tea and an Australian plain tea and a really good Japanese powdered tea that I whisk up in a bowl and fall into contemplation over. Tea is a drink of almost infinite possibility.

This isn’t a proper history post. If I were to give you the history of tea, it would take 6 volumes of sturdy size. This post is to get you thinking about tea’s past, no more.

Tea is a camellia variety (well, the botanical name is camellia thea). The different varieties of tea leaves available reflect the way they are processed (pan fried, dried etc).

In the eighteenth century, one of the names for it was bohea, which is my entirely useless piece of information for the day, produced simply because I’ve been doing lots of stuff based in eighteenth century society recently. My Hong Kong friends call the common garden Aussie-favourite tea “red tea” and make a great pickled egg using eggs, salt and very, very strong red tea.

I often hear green tea described as Japanese, but it isn’t confined to Japan. There are Korean green tea, Chinese, and others. My current favourite is, however, Japanese. After what I said earlier, you’d think my favourite was the bitter tea used for the tea ceremony, and, while I love that style, it isn’t my top favourite. I obviously have low taste, because I prefer genmaicha - tea with very cute popped rice floating round in it, and a lovely rounded and slightly woody flavour.

You may wish to note that camellia sinensis and its relatives or melaleuca alternifolia and its relatives are not at all related and do not get confused with each other except in both being called “tea” trees- the Aussie melaleuca was used by early British settlers when tea was unavailable - and is now used for medicinal not culinary purposes. They nearly all go well with scones, though.

I’ve been sent a new book by Wendy. My friends know me far, far too well. They keep giving me food books - Wendy knows me better than most and the results leave me opening her parcels slowly and exploring them joyously.

In fact, she sent me a bunch of books and some reproduction newspapers. Also much toothpaste. I spread the tubes of toothpaste out on the table and wondered if there was some symbolism in them.

I intend to blog all the food-related aspects of her present, and the first of them it a little booklet on Children’s Tea Parties. It has a picture of a very grumpy and rather chubby nineteenth century child on the cover. Any moment she’ll start screaming. i’m already covering my ears.

This booklet is part of a series called “Remember When Books” and is edited by Theodore Newport. What’s interesting about it is the way it collates the memories we want to keep and shapes the past we want to have. There are mannners and menus and schedules and party favours and decorations and food and how to read tea leaves. The booklet is larded with historical tidbits. For instance, on p 6 it has a paragraph about the Boston Tea Party and gives a recipe for Liberty Tea.

Liberty Tea

3 tbs dried raspberry leaves
5 cups boiling water

Put tea in teapot, add water, let steep for 8 minutes, strain and (if you want) sweeten with milk and honey.

You might want scones with that pot of tea.

Less than a week to go before the Regency Gothic banquet. Numerous souls have booked (well over sixty at last count) and of those a rather large proportion has costume. Mine is dusky pink with a black lace overdress-thing. (I don’t know clothing terms nearly as well as I know food.) Anyhow, if I were slender and beautiful, I would look like someone out of a Georgette Heyer novel. As it is, my costume looks gorgeous, due to the wondrousness of friends and family who can sew. I keep offering banquet-attendees my recipe for period makeup, but they’re sublimely disinterested.

There are some last minute concerns, but at this stage we just have to wear them. The chef wants to use modern techniques to bring the fat level of the food down. He doesn’t agree that the level of fat is part of the flavour and texture and is important to the style of the cuisine and that by changing it, he’s making it modern. I can’t win that argument, nor can I make the time between service of courses long enough to reflect Regency norms because that sort of thing costs vastly in modern hotel terms. I’ll let you know how the changes go down. It will make the food more digestible to the fragile modern stomach, for certain. The big question is if he’s right and he can reduce the fat levels without reducing the flavour or texture. I’ll report back next week.

Right now, what you need to know is what the final menu looks like. From next week I start blogging the recipes, so you’ll want an overview now.

The first course is based around a chicken dish. Chicken and vegetables and bread rolls basically. The second is based around beef and a delightful Springish pea soup. The third is an entirely evil array of cakes and desserts, including raspberry cream, icecream and ginger drops. I’ll blog the entire final menu on the night of the banquet and then I’ll follow with recipes.

Where we come from colours how we read recipes and how we walk through markets and what we do with the food we cook. This was brought home to me when I did some gentle armchair travelling.

Food History (the blog, not the discipline!) is nearly a year old and I was doing a bit of a stocktake so I could think of where to take it for its second year. I’d assumed that most of you reading this are in the US and Australia, with just a few from Great Britain. (more…)

In two hours it will be dusk and I will be entereing into a very solemn and sad day. Once a year it happens, and it’s a foodless and workless zone. I’ll do you an extra-good post on Sunday to make up for missing a day, I promise. Until then, for anyone Jewish, take care and be well over the fast. For everyone, see you at the other end!

Today I’m taking you back to my childhood.

When I was exceedingly young, someone gave me a herb reference book by Rosemary Hemphill for my birthday. I still have it. It was the first step in the long path that led me here.

A friend recently gave me an extraordinary reference book by Rosemary Hemphill’s son and introduced me to him when I was in Sydney earlier this year. You can find him in his shop in Rozelle (where I met him), on his website, or in the pages of one of his books (click on the pictures for more details). I recommend all three. But start here - Ian has answered some questions for us.

Question 1: Your family is an important part of Australia’s food history. Can you tell us about it, and how herbs and spices have interwoven with family life? (more…)

Quick reminder: bookings for the Regency Gothic Banquet at Conflux4 CLOSE THIS SUNDAY. Go to http://www.conflux.org.au and get your ticket while you can! (I don’t need to tell you that you may possibly find the best icecream you’ve ever tasted on the menu, do I? Or that Garth Nix promised to come in costume?)

PS There’ll be a really cool interview post later, so watch this space. While you’re watching, if you’re Canberra-bound you might want to go book your banquet ticket.

I’ve run out of Melbourne time.

I had planned to fill in my New Year period with a bunch of posts about my stepfather’s favourite food books. Between honey cakes and the trip to the country, the time has just flown.

I intend (not for a while, though) to blog other people’s lists of books, and it gets the idea off to a really bad start if I don’t even list the rest of the lovely pile of books Les made for me, so here they are. (more…)

The most important stop on our mini-tour of the Yarra Valley was at De Bortoli Wines. De Bortoli started in the Riverina, I think, where there are immensely long intensely sunny days. They now have wineries in a number of regions and produce consistently good wines across a range of styles.

I hadn’t tasted many of their wines, though one of my favourite dessert wines for the last dunnamany years has been their Noble One. It’s one of those rich and sweet sunshine-in-a-bottle drinks. I first encountered it at the High Court in Canberra, which is another story entirely.

My parents sprung a surprise on me at De Bortoli’s. They asked the counter staff (who were unfailingly charming) about the cheesemaker, Richard Thomas. He came out specially to see us. Why? It turns out he’s a good friend of my sister’s, who he describes as “one of the best wine educators in Australia.”

Richard is one of the best cheesemakers in Australia. He’s also a pretty awesome educator. My mouth is still reeling from the cheeses he introduced us to and the wines that we tasted. Basically, he moved the whole food element of the day from my brain into my tastebuds, which was perfect. (And if my sudden access of praise worries you, it’s because you weren’t there - it truly was a very special tasting experience, from the staff* to the comestibles.)

If you can get hold of Richard’s goat’s cheese, do. It’s gentle and rounded and perfection. And if you can get to De Bortoli’s book a cheese session. If you can’t book a cheese session then at least get a tasting platter or buy some cheese to take home.

I nibbled on Ossau Iratty (a sheep’s cheese from the Basque country) and thought of the Song of Roland. Mum and I had their Valdeon again for dessert - it is such a perfect cheese to have with a slice of fresh apple and a glass of muscat.

As for wines, we only tasted three, because they were the ones we were thinking of buying. The De Bortoli Yarra Valley Estate Grown Viognier is very different to the Canberra cool climate wines I know. Very nice, though. I want to extend my Melbourne trip and help Mum drink her bottle.

I liked the Shiraz Viognier even better (and I’m not a shiraz drinker, by and large). It is just the perfect wine for cheese and Monday was the perfect cheese day.

Let me sigh a little sigh of pleasure and remember it for a moment. Perfect days are rare and special. The wonderful thing about perfect food days is that the memories include taste and scent and can last forever.

*we didn’t eat the staff, but I wrote this post when I was tired - just in case you were worried about my sudden discovery of long pig.

food, de Bortoli, Richard Thomas, cheese, wine, Yarra Valley

My mind is still dwelling on the perfect foodie Monday.

From the suburbs of Melbourne, my family and I headed for the country. We went through Lilydale to the Yarra Valley.

When I was a child, Lilydale was rural. Now it’s almost a suburb of Melbourne. We stopped there for morning tea, just for old time’s sake.

If we were in the US, the cafe we were at would probably be called a diner. It was very unpretentious. We bought coffee and shared a giant chocolate fudge biscuit. While we did that, we gazed at the menu. This menu was the perfect example of what has happened to small Aussie cafes/takeaway shops. For breakfast the menu included things like bacon and eggs, toast, eggs benedict, croissants and omelettes.

For lunch you could buy a range of sandwiches (announced as “foccacia, Turkish style”) that included everything from grilled vegetables to chicken schnitzel.

For the very hungry, there was a selection of proper meals. There were too many for me to scribble down, but they included ginger poached chicken, Mongolian beef, Thai beef salad, stuffed Cajun chicken, Dijon Parmagiana chicken, tofu stir-fry. Fusion takeaway.

It smelled good, even if my mind can’t encompass some of the countries that were stirred into a dish. Actually, given we were there late morning, what we were smelling was mostly pad thai and hot chips, but it was still good. I kept looking round and thinking it was fifty years of Australian cuisine in one small, laid-back cafe.

We drove past Nellie Melba’s family farm on the way out past Lilydale. One day I might have to give you a Peach Melba recipe in honour of the Yarra Valley and the Mitchell family.

After this, we went to de Bortoli’s winery. That will be my next post, and my last for this trip about the Yarra Valley. I know there’s a lot more food to talk about, but I’m all out of time and I’ll be back in Canberra before you know it.

On a happier note, I will be offering my food history course again first half of next year (hot off the press - or rather, hasn’t even hit the press yet) so more explorations of regional food might be in order.

After we had bought our artisanal bread, my mother and I visited an antiquarian booksellers (680 High Street Kew, for anyone wanting to buy me my next thousand birthday presents).

This is one bookshop that’s a foodie’s dream. As well as a nice selection of books, it has old milk bottles and cartons (including some upmarket waxed half bottles from the 1960s), old chocolate boxes and biscuit tins (I have one now to house my teaching spices), an old gill measure as used by a milko for cream (I ran out of money, alas, so it’s still there), bottles of cake colouring and spices, old drink bottles … in fact, an awful lot of the housing of foods past. They went back as far as about 1920.