Food History

It’s too hot for a proper post, so tonight you get a rather improper one. If my family were depicted in this (which they aren’t) they would be as matzah covered with vegemite.

You don’t need me to tell you that the history is unreliable? Good.

I have chosen a letter at random tonight and that letter happened to be ‘c.’ If you think I’m being lazy, really, I’m not. It’s just that I’ve spent 14 hours today doing other work. This is the busiest January I can remember. I keep telling myself that things will slow down soon and life will return to normal. Also that the record heat will break and we shall have some nice cool breezes.

chick peas (cicer arietinum)- Sinhalese kadala, Egyptian Arabic huumus, also known as garbanzo beans. Soak them well before use. Unlike most other legumes, they never seem to lose their shape, no matter how long they are cooked. This is why they are so very useful in cholents and other “Sabbath stews”, where the stew is put on many, many hours before the meal. They are also, of course, the sine qua non of hummous bi tahina, which is named after the two most overwhelming ingredients - chickpeas and tahina paste - you may want to add garlic, salt, lemon juice and enough water to blend the mixture and then sprinkle with olive oil and paprika.

chicken feet - if I were you I’d skin them before cooking with them. They look horrible staring at you out of a yum cha basket, but go into some quite lovely dishes. If you want a really good bouillon or chicken broth for cooking, the feet are excellent.

chilli pepper (capsicum anuum or capsicum frutescens)- aiee, there are so many varieties of chilli. The ones that are used in Indonesian cooking are called cabe (eg cabe hijau - green chilli, cabe rawit - bird pepper). Jalapeno is the South American stuff, and bird’s eye the most common everyday variety in Australian supermarkets. The Hindi name is lal mirch. Try the wonderful glowing red Kashmiri powder for a very slightly different flavour. I love the different varieties of chilli - they are all capsicum varieties, with more or less of the “hot stuff” and come in every colour from red to yellow to black and every flavour from salad to savoury to volcano. Someone told me once that if you put a tiny sliver of the salad variety (a very, very, very tiny sliver) you can upgrade the quality of a poor white wine, but why waste either the wine or the capsicum?

Chinese five-spice powder is a blend of star anise, Szechuan pepper (fagara), cassia, cloves, and fennel seeds. It may also sometimes include cardamom, dried ginger, or licorice root.

Chinese pickled radish - daikon in Japanese for the enormous long, radish root, this radish is milder than the little burning one you carve into flowers and put in salads. Daikon makes a lurid yellow Japanese pickle that goes nicely in some types of sushi. You guessed it - I have a fondness for the vegetable.

This last week I’ve heard people discuss, very seriously, the subject of whether they will be very correct and eat lamb on Australia Day. Australia Day finished two days ago and now people are discussing how they cooked their lamb on Australia Day and how much they enjoyed it. Since my brain has melted along with all the other Australians who are enjoying (is ‘enjoying’ the right word?) the massive heatwave that will be with us for the next little while (although Canberra is relatively cool, only having reached 100 degrees F today) I thought that it’s a good time to explore the not-very-complex history of lamb on Australia Day. This is so that people outside Australia understand the complex and lengthy history of this mysterious phenomenon. Watch how I reduce the complex into something amazingly straightforward – it’s like a magician’s trick.

The lamb industry has a remarkable bunch of marketing people. In 1990 they introduced Naomi Watts to the world when she chose a lamb roast over dinner with Tom Cruise. You don’t believe me?

This ad ran for a while. It eventually ran out of novelty value, however, and then the clever lamb people came up with this:

And that ad, ladies and gentlemen, led to a week’s discussion of lamb and eating it on Australia Day. The marketing people must be very proud. Me, I don’t remember what I had on Australia Day, but I know it wasn’t lamb. And tonight, dinner was stir fried beef with onion and garlic and ginger and capsicum and soy. If I only get hungry once a day because the weather is over-the-top, then I need to eat properly. My friends told me that, you see, when they asked me if I was having lamb for Australia Day.

I think the moral of the story is that people can be talked into believing something is an important part of their food culture, if the television ad is the right one.

No-one made any suggestions for Australia Day, so I am giving you another ingredients post. I am determined to reach an end of my list of ingredients by hook or by crook (or should that be by apple or by cabbage). I need to explain. It’s not a complete list of every possible ingredient or foodstuff. It’s a list I made for some friends, to explain recipes we were discussing, years ago. Right now I want to get to the end of the list and post everything. Maybe one day I will add other ingredients and go back to discussing specific ingredients in more detail. One thing at a time, however. Or two, to be more accurate. Just two ingredients today.

bay leaf (laurus nobilis) - Indonesia daun salam, French laurier, German: lorbeer, Italian: alloro, lauro, Spanish: laural, Japanese: gekkei -ju- ha, Sinhalese rampe, which is, interestingly enough, a herb mentioned in that fairy story where the Queen is so desperate for some that she promises her unborn child to a witch. This is another of those herbs you don’t leave home without. I was taught as a girl you carefully put a leaf in a stew and remove it before serving. Now I know you can also crush it up and put it in a curry. It is actually bay laurel and it was probably used to crown victors at ancient Olympic Games - my memory is unreliable in this, and my library contradictory - so when in doubt take the poetic angle. A bit of a worry - does that mean that the person who sits on his laurels was hiding a curry from view in an unsavoury place?

beans (green beans are phaseolus vulgaris) French haricot vert, Indonesia kacang buncis, Portuguese feijoa (but not, I think, referring to string beans, but to chick peas and their ilk), Spanish judias (which meant I took great glee in wandering around Spain in 1995 declaring to anyone who would listen that I was a green bean - since the word for a female Jew in the Spanish of Spain is, shall we say, not dissimilar). The Indonesian buncis is “borrowed” from a Dutch word, from the days of Dutch colonisalisation. Broad beans are vicia faba – you can cook the whole bean, choose your cooking technique according to how tough and old the bean is (try frying onion and mustard and cumin and chilli then adding thin strips of young broad beans in the pod - cut horizontally). My family shell older beans and throw out the pods, which retrospectively, is a great deal of work to produce so much waste product. Mind you, the beans themselves make great stews, especially with lots of onion and garlic and tomato.

Today I have another guest post. These posts and my friends are keeping me sane. I should be through the worst of things soon and back to normal posting even sooner. Until then, enjoy.

Emma of TreehouseJukebox is going to introduce us to a museum that sounds as if it comes from The Hobbit. It’s in an old mill, but, as she says, that’ another food history story.

The pig was always my favorite.

Why exactly, I’m not sure, but there was something wonderful about that giant painting of a pig - lit and hung along with all the other acclaimed artwork at the Brandywine River Museum.

‘Portrait of a Pig’ is the full name of the Jamie Wyeth piece. It and the work of all the other Wyeths have been swirling around in my mind since the recent death of painter Andrew Wyeth.

All throughout my childhood, my family would visit the Brandywine River Museum each winter and enjoy their collections by those local artists. There were other wonderful things to be seen inside the museum, but this is really about the food.

Every year, after we’d seen the sights indoors, we’d go back out into the freezing cold courtyard. It’s a beautiful, cobblestone market area. Local artisans would sell handmade yarn, sweaters, and quilts.

But we bought only two things every year: piping hot apple cider and freshly roasted chestnuts.

The chestnuts were roasted right there and scooped into small paper bags by a vendor wearing fingerless gloves. I remember the feeling of holding the warm packet in my cold fingers. At first, they’d be too hot to eat, but soon I’d be peeling the chestnuts and savoring each mouthful.

And we can’t forget the cider. This was cider pressed from local apples and served as hot as possible. It was tart, tangy, and delicious. It was especially memorable for its heavy dose cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. To this day, I love my apple cider full of those fragrant spices.

Hot chestnuts and spiced apple cider will always be inextricably linked, for me, with the work of Andrew Wyeth and all the other Wyeths - and with winter memories of childhood.

The resolution, to create a menu for a three course meal, with recipes I’ve not tried, or with a twist, that will complement a very rich alcoholic cheesecake recipe I discovered at Christmas. I selected February for the month to do this. Yes, it is already topping 42 degrees Celsius on a regular basis here. Yes, that’s over 107 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, February is usually our hottest month. Yes, I am possibly insane.

The menu thus far:

entrée ~ Gazpacho soup (with a nod to the Boys from the Dwarf)

main ~ honey and ginger roast chicken with potato & aioli salad
poached pear salad, fresh peas pineapple, and grated carrots & cheese

dessert ~ Irish Cream Liqueur Cheesecake.

Bottles of Zibbibo to serve with the main, Irish coffee with dessert.

I believe I may have a few willing helpers in the kitchen on the day, and I’ve already got the music sorted. I am really looking forward to making this, although I do believe I’ll be grateful for the air conditioning.

But surely cheesecake can’t give us a glimpse into the past? You might be surprised, for the first recorded mention of cheesecake was of it being served to the athletes during the first Olympic Games, in 776BC. Made of crushed cheese it might not have been a cheesecake we’d recognise today, but most definitely a cheesecake.

And while the recipe may well have been refined to our modern notions by Arnold Rueben, people have gone on, adding this and that to the recipe to slightly alter the taste. I’m not sure who thought to add Irish Cream to cheesecake, but I’m more than happy to try this recipe:

IRISH CREAM LIQUEUR CHEESECAKE

Base:
¼ cup dark cocoa
¼ cup sugar
1 tbs butter
1 pack McVitties digestive biscuits

FILLING:
700 grams softened cream cheese
¾ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup Irish Cream (I’ll be using Feeneys, it’s where I found this recipe, and I like the taste of it)
some melted chocolate

DIRECTIONS:
Mix butter, sugar and cocoa in a bowl. Stir in digestive biscuits. Spread over bottom of greased 23 cm springform pan, bake at 350 F (180 C) for 10 minutes. Cool pan and grease sides.
Beat cream cheese til smooth, in a bowl. Gradually beat in sugar, eggs and blend in liqueur. Pour 1/3 mixture into a seperate bowl, and stir in melted chocolate. Pour half of plain mixture into prepared pan. Drizzle with half the chocolate mixture. Repeat layers. Bake 10 minutes at 450 F (230 C), then 55 minutes at 250 F (120 C).

PS Note from Gillian for US raders - an entree is not the main course in Australia.

It’s Australia Day on Monday and Sharyn has given us something to celebrate it.

What else would you like for Australia Day? Two days of old-fashioned Australian recipes? Let me know, otherwise I shall post my own thoughts and they might just include vegemite. I have discovered that you can make most North Americans hide under tables if you produce a big enough jar of vegemite, a knife, some butter and a piece of bread.

There is a romance to the word bushranger that the modern terms sociopath, or career criminal, just simply don’t evoke, and in the 1860s our sleepy little region had its own bushranger: ‘Mad Dog’ Morgan. By the time Dan Morgan got to this area he had been suspected of being involved in stock theft as a teenager, and had been sentenced to twelve years hard labour for highway robbery. He had served six years of his sentence, when he was released for good behaviour. He continued the good behaviour by not reporting to the Ovens police, and promptly absconding from the area.

Within three years he had been identified as being involved in several major crimes, including robber under arms, another term from the past that evokes a lot more romance than it’s modern equivalent of armed hold-up. In 1864, on three separate occasions he is known to have shot and killed three men, an overseer, and two police officers. Dan earned his Mad Dog nickname from his erratic behaviour; often appearing nervous, his mood could swing rapidly between an almost courtly manner, and violent rage.

Opposite Walla Walla Station, on top of a low hill is a striking rock formation. Huge white granite boulders, that were once the central core of a long extinct volcano. The Aboriginal people had used these rocks as a camp site before the settlers arrived. From the top you have a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. Dan used it to keep a lookout for the police, and a plaque at the site now, tells us that he used to get fresh supplies from the station owners. These supplies were, apparently, freely given, in modern terms one might look at it as a very practical health insurance.

Since Dan’s death in 1865 the rocks have been known as Morgan’s Lookout. And this year the Greater Hume Shire will be celebrating Australia Day there. A traditional Aussie bbq breakfast will kick off the day, and I thought I’d share my favourite herbed bbqed steak recipe, fondly referred to by my son as ’steak and green stuff’:

BBQ Steak and Herbs (aka green stuff)

4 - 6 thick porterhouse steaks
2 tbs oil
8 tbs mixed herbs, I usually use the Scarborough Fair herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary, & thyme
1 tbs salt
½ tbs freshly ground black pepper

Directions
Put two small bowls side by side, put oil in one, and herbs and seasoning in the other.
Wipe steaks dry with paper towelling, then dip the side edges into the oil, before rolling in the herb mixture.
Fry on a flat grill for several minutes each side, to your preference.

Sharyn gets to the strong stuff.

THE DRINKS

Growing up in this region gave me a passion for food, but it also inspired my love of history. And the source of both can be traced to a very specific location in Chiltern, the courtyard of the old Star Hotel (aka the Grapevine Hotel), on the corner of Main St and Conness St where a grapevine, planted in 1867, is still standing. This grapevine survived the disease that wiped out nearly all the region’s original vines; major bushfires; and even a Disney film crew. It is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as being the largest grapevine in the Southern Hemisphere.

I remember the first time I saw it, running my hand along one of the massive twisted branches, and seeing the bright green of the new leaves, trying to imagine how many other people had done the exact same thing. And I turned and looked at the hotel, and I wondered how the place had looked the grapevine was first planted, and what kind of food did they serve then, and how was it stored, and so a slight obsession was born.

Trips to Milawa mean we come back along the Hume, past the turn off to Chiltern, and it pleases me to know the grapevine is still there. But planning a trip to Milawa gets me thinking about what wine I’d serve with this meal. I’m rather partial to Brown Bros Zibbibo, and think it would suit the main meal very well indeed.

But with the cheesecake, I think I’d have to serve Irish Coffee:

Irish Coffee for 4 – 6 people:
1 cup heavy cream
3 tbs sugar
6 cups strong, hot black coffee
¾ cup Jameson Whiskey.

Whip cream and 1 tbs sugar, with an electric mixer, til soft peaks form. Set aside.
Combine remaining sugar, coffee and whiskey.
Pour into mugs and top with whipped cream.
Serve immediately.

More from Sharyn.

Perhaps this should really be part three the second, because I am still on about side dishes. This is mostly because I found a great article about aioli over at Practically Edible. I love this site, they show a great deal of humour in their articles.

I, probably along with most home cooks who read cookbooks the way one might read a novel, (’fess up, folks, I am not the only one – even if you are just looking at the pictures) had always thought aioli originated in Provence, but I am intrigued to know that the best guess is that it was probably derived from the Roman garlic and oil sauce: aleatum.

I however, do not make aioli according to the French saying, the recipe I have allows me to use an egg yolk, which makes it easier. So the side dishes for the NYE Resolution meal will be the pear salad, pineapple pieces (which may, or may not, be soaked in rum) fresh peas, grated carrot and cheese (yes, I am still a child at times) and potato & aioli salad:

Potato & Aioli Salad

800 grams baby/chat potatoes boiled or steamed until tender, then cut in half and set aside to cool.
4 rashers bacon, finely diced, fried, then set aside to cool.
4 eggs, hard boiled, then left to cool.
Aioli:
1 egg yolk
3 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp dijon mustard
2 tbs fresh basil leaves, chopped (I once used basil pesto, and it didn’t taste too bad, but the potato salad was an … errr interesting colour)
2 tbs fresh parsley , chopped
2 tsps chives, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
½ cup olive oil

Place egg yolk, lemon juice, mustard, herbs and garlic into the bowl of a food processor, and process until finely chopped. Gradually add the oil in a thin, steady stream, continue processing til mixture is thick. Season with salt and pepper.

Combine potatoes, eggs and bacon into a large bowl, add the aioli, mix well. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Of course, as with all things, the fresher the produce the better, and I may just have to factor in a trip to Milawa, via Everton, and EV Olives, so I have fresh good quality olive oil for the salad, and some cheese for the pear salad, and maybe even a bottle or two of wine to have with the meal.

Sharyn’s New Year just keeps getting better and better. And so does her kindness. She sent these so that I could have time out for my father’s funeral.

Sides are as important as deciding on the main dish, when contemplating an entire menu. Even though I’m roasting a chicken for the main, it’s still likely to be fairly hot, and I’m thinking salads to serve with it.

To start with I’ll probably make potato salad, though I prefer to make mine with aioli rather than store bought mayonnaise, it gives a slight garlic taste to the potatoes. Then I like the sound of a pear salad. Yes, I said pear salad. It’s different, it’s going to take me out my comfort zone, and I just plain like pears. (I often serve a pear bacon and cheese casserole with roasts in winter) As a little girl, growing up on a Merino/Hereford stud farm, I loved clambering into the wide branches of the pear tree in the orchard, and hiding so I could read a book when I was probably supposed to be cleaning my room. I still love seeing a pear tree in blossom.

Pears have been around since antiquity, they are mentioned in The Odyssey; whilst our good friend at Wikipedia tell us the Romans had three dozen different varieties although rumour has it they did not eat them raw; and that court accounts show the Sheriffs of London shipped pears from Rochelle, to present to King Henry the Third.

So with that much history behind them, I had better make a good job of this recipe:

Poached Pear Salad with Blue Cheese, Spiced Caramel Walnuts & Blackberry Jam

INGREDIENTS:

• Salad greens
• 150 grams blue cheese (you could use cheddar or brie, if you don’t like the taste of blue cheese)
• Poached Pears:
• 2 ripe pears, cut in half and cored
• 1 ½ cups white wine
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup Port wine
• 2 whole cloves
• Blackberry Jam Vinaigrette:
• ¾ cup poaching liquid from the pears
• 2 TBSP cider vinegar
• ¾ cup olive oil
• 1 tsp garlic
• ¼ cup blackberry jam
• Spiced Caramel Walnuts:
• 1 cup walnuts
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ tsp chili powder (this can be omitted if you have someone who cant stand chili)
• ½ tsp sweet paprika
• 1 tsp sea salt

METHOD

1. Poached Pears: Bring wines, sugar and cloves to a boil(making sure the sugar dissolves) and then bring to a simmer. Poach pears for 15 minutes. Remove ¾ cup of the liquid and reserve. Leave the pears in the liquid while you prepare the rest of the salad.
2. Blackberry Jam Vinaigrette: Cook reserved pear liquid (make sure no cloves are in there) until reduced by half. In a blender or Cuisinart mix reduction with blackberry jam, vinegar, garlic and some salt to taste. While blender is running, slowly add the oil.
3. Spiced Caramel Walnuts: Combine sugar with the spices. Place into a saucepan and turn on medium heat. Watch carefully to see the sugar start to caramelize around the edges of the pan. When that happens throw in the walnuts and stir. When they are coated in caramel spread onto a pan that has been covered in parchment paper. Once it is completely cooled, break into pieces.
4. To put the salad together: Place a little bit of vinaigrette onto the bottom of the plate (this insures that the bottom greens get some of the good stuff too). Slice poached pear half in half. The slice each quarter and fan out placing it in the middle of the greens. Garnish with walnuts and blue cheese crumbles. Drizzle desired amount of vinaigrette.

Elisa has been immersed in the world of Doctor Who for over twenty years. Perhaps this is why she writes for watchingdrwho.com and shadowproclamation.net and has been known to randomly offer Jelly Babies to strangers.

Jelly Babies and Me

I started watching Doctor Who during my freshman year of High School, after having the whole story of the show explained to me by a friend during a school trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. It only took one viewing. I was hooked, and I dragged my whole family with me into this new fandom. My first Doctor was the fourth Doctor, Tom Baker. Is it any wonder that I quickly became intrigued by the Doctor’s love of Jelly Babies? He used them as a prop, an icebreaker, a distraction, and of course, a reward. “Care for a Jelly Baby?” he would ask. Living out in California as I did, I despaired. Yes, I did want a Jelly Baby. But where was I to find one so far away from the UK?

In the end, I found a shop in the telephone book that I thought might be what I needed. “Touch of Britain” was just across town. Fortified with directions, we formed a family expeditionary force and set off on out Jelly Baby hunt. What we found was way more than we expected. This wasn’t merely a small shop selling British Sweets and paraphernalia, oh no. It was also a Tea Shop (bliss!). And yes, they had Jelly Babies. And the best part? They were just as good as I expected them to be.

I must mention here that there seem to be more than one kind of Jelly Babies out there at this point. I just tend to refer to the non-Bassetts varieties as “the faux Jelly Babies.” They are not anywhere as good.

To this day my family still occasionally goes on Jelly Baby hunts, and I always end up with the Blackcurrant ones. Sometimes it pays to be the only one that likes something. And we still try to get back to Touch of Britain as often as possible. Not just for the Jelly Babies, mind you. In their Tea Shop you can get proper egg and chips with mushy peas, tea and crumpets, or steak and kidney pie. Just think of all the tastiness I would have missed out on if it weren’t for the Doctor and his Jelly Babies.

Today may be a list of ingredients, but it’s a sad list. It’s my a-list (or what remains thereof) and I chose it because it has a little bit about my stepfather’s food memories. What I don’t have of them in my notes, I shall never have, because he is very close to death. Some nice people have done me emergency posts so I can be with family for the next couple of days.

When you read this, think of Les, who was simply one of the nicest and most generous people I have ever known.

agar-agar kosher jelly, also the sort of jelly you will find in most Chinese and Japanese cooking. Made from a seaweed - in fact, it is dried seaweed, and needs to be soaked before using if you buy it in long clear sticks, rather than as a processed powder. It is like ordinary jelly when it is cooked, with a high protein content, a very high water content, and not much else, unless you make it sweet, in which case it is not at all low in sugars, either. Used to be as much invalid food as barley broth (or, in my family, chicken soup) because it is very easy to digest. Les told me “It is used as an alternative for gelatine which is an animal by-product made from boiled hoofs, hide and bone and therefore a no-no for vegetarian and kosher food cooks. Widely used in Japanese and Chinese cooking where it is used as a thickening in soups and sauces. In Western cooking it is used in jellies and ice-cream. Medicinally it is used as a laxative.” I have to admit up-front, though, that medicinally a lot of things can be used as a laxative and that this is not a reason to steer clear of jelly.

apple (malus communis - this has me puzzled, since “malus” suggests something ill, or wicked - can’t be anything to do with that Adam and Eve story, can it?). Hebrew tappuach, Turkish elma, German apfel, French pomme. All modern apples are supposed to be descended from crab apples originating in China and Japan. Crab apples make adorable jelly but are otherwise a bit hard on the taste buds. When I discover useful facts like this, I heave a big sigh of gratitude for experimenting farmers and orchardists down the ages. Which brings me to the eternal question: did Adam and Eve eat a crab apple? My mother once pointed out the etymological confusion in the ancient near East between apple and apricot - but I think Adam and Eve eating crab apple is far more poetic than taking a bite of a juicy apricot. When my stepfather was a kid (he claimed he grew up in his Dad’s fruitshop in Melbourne, which is a worry), the eating apples were Jonathon, Delicious, Gravenstein and Snow Apple and for cooking Granny Smith, Stewart Seedlings and Five Crown. Les grumbled that “scientists have mucked around so much with cross-breeding and genetics that it’s hard to get a decent eating apple today. Winter’s nights Mum would put apples, pears and potatoes in her wood fired oven for a warming snack.”

apple brandy (the closest I can come to a botanical name for this is my favourite variety of apple brandy - calvados, le trou normand), in the U.S.A. apple brandy is called Applejack - I’ve always wondered who Jack was.

asparagus (asparagus officinalis) - I find the sad, white, sunlight free variety very European, but admit I prefer the less civilised green kind. The difference is the way they are grown - the white stuff may look ghostly, but it is quite real - it has just been kept in the dark. Asparagus is one of the best microwaveable vegies around - it and corn zap beautifully, with no added water or sauces. Asparagus is member of the lily family, and a native of Europe like a great many Australians.

Sharyn has not forgotten you. She has been very busy. part 3 is coming soon.

Now given that dessert is going to be alcoholic, and I have a marinade with green ginger wine for a chicken main dish, I was sorely tempted to find an alcoholic entree too. But my family and I are rather fond of the BBC show, Red Dwarf, my son is still proud of the fact that, in Year Seven, he managed to use one of The Cat’s lines from Series 1 to a school mate. It’s the kind of line that is probably not best suited to a family blog, so we shall leave it at that!

But that made the choice of entree really rather easy, because this is all about recipes I haven’t made before. So for an entree I believe I shall make … Red Dwarf. Fans can probably say this with me (with suitable gasping) gazpacho soup.

While soup has probably been a part of cooking since first we added water to a cooking pot, Food Time Line tells us that the soup, as it is known today, orignated in Spain. The Moors invaded Andalusia, and other regions, leaving a legacy of middle eastern flavour to their cooking, and in such hot regions, a chilled soup would be sensible. In fact, given that February is usually our hottest month, and tempratures have already reached 43 degrees Celsius here, it is an eminently sensible idea for my NYE Resolution menu as well.

So here’s thanks to the boys from the Dwarf, especially Arnold Rimmer, for the inspiration for my first course., and an easy looking recipe.

Gazpacho Soup

Ingredients:
2 x 850 ml cans tomato juice
60 ml lime juice
1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce
freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 large red onion, finely chopped
2 small cucumbers, seeded and diced
2 medium tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 medium avocado, diced.

Method:
Combine juices, sauce, pepper and garlic in large bowl, cover and chill in refridgerator for a minimum of four hours. Just before serving, add remaining ingredients, gently stir through. Serves 4 – 6.

margarine - these days an acceptable substitute for butter, 19th century margarine was something else entirely. It was edible, but only just, and used very odd ingredients better not described. If you every go back to Victorian England in a time machine, stick to butter.

marjoram (either marjorama hortensis or origanum marjorana - the sweet marjoram we normally use in cooking is marjoram hortensis)

marshmallow - don’t be confused between the plant and the sweet. The plant is althaea officinalis - it may have had a connection with the plant in a dim and distant English past, but these days it has none.

matzah - aka matzo unleavened bread, basically a dry biscuit. Matzah meal is the flour made from ground matzah, and comes in three grades (fine, medium and coarse) which can be used for everything from gefilte fish to cake baking.

mint (various) - balm or lemon balm (melissa officinalis) which is especially good with lemon in a mid-summer herbal tea; spearmint is mentha viridis, peppermint is mentha piperita; pennyroyal (delicious but not at all good for you) is mentha pulegium- calamint is a thyme, not a mint, in case you were confused (I was).

mirin - a yellow and quite alcoholic sweet, rice-based, cooking wine from Japan. It has about the same alcohol content as port, but, because the flavour is less strong, is far more flexible for cooking. A splash goes as nicely in cucumber pickles as it does in sukiyaki. Spelling varies because the final “n” is actually somewhere between an “n” and an “n” (at least to my ears) which means that some people transcribe it from Japanese as mirin, and some prefer mirim. Either way, it’s a handy bottle to have in a pantry.

MSG - monosodium glutamate, ajinomoto, a flavour enhancer with a strong flavour of its own

mung bean (phaseolus aureus) - whence bean sprouts. Well, mostly - these days in urban Australia you can get the most amazing gourmet packs with six different types of sprouts, but the generic “bean sprout” is mung. Mung bean flour is the base for hun kwe, a very easy and useful jelly-like cake. Grab a packet of the stuff, add sugar and a litre of fluid (coconut milk or milk are the most usual), cook it over the stove as for a custard, adding your favourite flavours and colour if you feel untraditional (blueberries are great in summer, though you do end up with oddly-purple cubes), tip it into a dampened pan after it has thickened, and cut it into pieces when cold. The texture is unusual for a cake, but it is nothing the worse for that. You can use the whole beans in any lentil or bean dish - but soak them first.

Only three ingredients today, but they are the last of the letter ‘e’ on my list. If I want to give you more from this section of the alphabet I’ll have to do some work, and we all know how very lazy I am.

eel - can be found in the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, Victoria Park in Sydney, and lots of other places, but rarely purchasable. I’m told (but have never cooked with eel) that if you make an eel stew you will need more water than other meats require because, like sago, it is fairly glutinous. It is not kosher.

eggplant (solanum melongena)- related to deadly nightshade (though not nearly as dangerous) - aka aubergine, brinjal, needs treatment to get rid of bitterness which is why recipes using it often call for baking it, grilling it or letting it sit, salted prior to actual cooking; disgustingly yummy in dips and curries, the Japanese variety is small, the SE Asian variety tiny, and the US variety so abundantly large you almost die of horror when it shrinks as you prepare it.

eucalyptus (there are so many varieties I’m not even going to try for anything but eucalyptus spp) aka “that Aussie tree that you can see in the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie when there was no way it had colonised Europe in the Middle Ages.” That reminds me, my preferred way of making billy tea is to boil the billy on an open fire. The open fire should contain some nice fresh gum leaves, so that the heat releases the fragrance. It is overkill to put the eucalyptus in the billy. When the water has just come to the boil, add one teaspoon of tea per cup and one extra, and then get someone else to swing the billy. This settles the tea leaves in the bottom of the tin, so that you don’t need to strain the tea.