BY THE TIME WE GOT TO WOODY WE WERE HALF A MILLION STRONG

Posted: August 26, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Lamb, Martha Stewart, Roasts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Dear Amelia,
It’s the middle of the night and I’ve just got an email from my mate Martha Stewart telling me how to remember what colour my walls are.
“Never forget with this sneaky tip,” she writes.
“Write the paint name on a piece of tape and stick it inside a light-switch cover.”
You too could get an Organising Tip of the Day emailed to you by Martha.
All you have to do is have no life and visit her website and sign up.
Martha is tireless when it comes to her millions of fans, of which Nanna is one.
I was channelling Martha today because it’s your Great Grandma’s 80th birthday dinner on Sunday – a low-key affair, which is probably a good thing because Nanna is doing the food.
My day would have been a lot better if I’d got an Organising Tip of the Day from Martha saying, “Never forget to put the sugar in your mother’s 80th birthday cake or it will look like diarrhoea and you’ll have to make it all over again.”
But I didn’t and I did – as in, didn’t get the email, so had to make another cake.
On top of that, Carlton lost to the Gold Coast Suns.
Yes, the Gold Coast Suns. Shit, shit, shit. The shame.
Other things I have done this week: Went to Woodanilling with your Grandpa, who had to interview someone for a Science Network story.
I’ve never been to Woodanilling before and very pretty it is too.
If a bit on the small side.
There are approximately six things to photograph in Woodanilling.
I photographed five of them because it was pouring down and I got soaked and had to scurry back to the car before I could snap the Woodanilling Tavern which was gorgeous but doesn’t open until 4pm so there went my lunch plans down the toilet.
Here are the five things I snapped.


The post office.


The CWA hall.


The general store, which is now derelict (there were once FIVE general stores).


This lovely old church.


We went to Woodanilling (which is known as Woody to the locals) via Cranbrook, Tambellup, Broomehill and Katanning.
It took forever but was worth it because I hadn’t been through this part of the Great Southern for 30-odd years and had forgotten how lovely it was.
Speaking of lovely, here is a picture of your Grandpa doing star jumps in front of the Broomehill pub.


On the way to Woodanilling in the car, a bit of Crosby, Stills and Nash channelling started happening and I was singing, “By the time we got to Woody,” on a continuous loop in my head. It nearly drove me nuts.
We were gone for hours and hours and Ella wasn’t very impressed but at least she didn’t crap on the rug, which was a bonus seeing as how she’s 253 years old in dog years and no longer has any anal glands.
Nanna cooked a rack of lamb for dinner, which was delicious, and then was able to watch Bethenny Ever After because your Grandpa was buggered from all the driving and fell asleep in the chair.
Bethenny Ever After is a reality show that follows the life of Bethenny Frankel and her long-suffering husband, Jason, and her staff who help her run her business empire.


Bethenny is pretty, quick-witted, funny and a squillionaire. She’s also self-centred, whiny, self-indulgent, shallow and addicted to the limelight.
She’s appalling. Nanna loves her.
Unfortunately, your Grandpa doesn’t.
Nothing could redeem Bethenny in your Grandpa’s eyes, except for maybe ripping her tongue out with a pair of pliers.
He stomps his way down the passage shouting, “How can you watch this crap?”
Then he goes and sits in his little office, his TV tuned to the History Channel, and watches people die in German concentration camps.
What your Grandpa really does like is a juicy rack of lamb with a crumb crust.
Here’s the recipe.

PS: Want to know how many words of three letters or more you can make from the word Woodanilling? 105. At least that’s how many I got. Don’t you love long car journeys?

RACK OF LAMB WITH A CRUMB CRUST

Serves 2

1 rack of lamb (6-8 cutlets), frenched, with fat removed
olive oil
1 tsp mustard
1 slice bread
½ small clove garlic, crushed
½ tbsp finely chopped parsley

Put the slice of bread in a mini food processor or blender and process until you have crumbs.
Mix the crumbs with the garlic and parsley and a little olive oil to bind.
Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Drizzle a little olive oil over the rack of lamb, put it in a baking dish and cook it for 20 minutes.
Spread the mustard over the top of the meat then press on the crumb crust.
Drizzle over a little more olive oil and cook for another 10 minutes, by which time the crumb crust should be golden-brown.
This makes pink, juicy lamb.
If you like it well done, cook for 25-30 minutes when you first put it in the oven.

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BLONDE MOMENTS

Posted: August 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Asian food, Cakes, Chicken, Chilli, Pauline Martin, Salad, Spices, Thai food | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Dear Amelia,
Just lately when we’re staying with your Mum and Dad, and Nanna rushes in to your bedroom in the morning to get you out of your cot, you sometimes get all pouty and stick your head under the quilt and say, “No!”
At first I thought it was because you were just being a little shit but then I realised it might be because when I get out of bed I look like this.


I took this picture at 8 o’clock yesterday morning after frightening myself when I looked in the bathroom mirror.
I’m not sure why it happens, this hair thing.
Your Grandpa says it’s a gift.
Personally I think it’s because of “product”, which looks like this.


Back in the day, when Nanna was younger, bottles of stuff like this were called “hair care”.
They changed the name to “product” so they could start charging gullible people like me $35 a pop.
Things were a lot simpler on the hair front when Nanna was young.
A drop of Silvikrin shampoo or Sunsilk Lemon (for Greasy Hair), and you were set for at least a week.


If you wanted to be blonde you just sprayed something called Sun Up on your head and stood out in the sun until you passed out and/or your hair was bleached to the desired shade of lightness.
OK, fluorescent yellowness.


This is a pretty scary photo isn’t it?
It’s because it was taken in 1973 (look at that pampas grass and the umbrella tree and the pink hibiscus – so 70s).
That’s your Great Aunty Pauline on the left looking gorgeous with her natural red hair.
The scruffy, long-haired bloke in the middle is your Grandpa and the girl with her nose in the air and bright yellow Sun Up hair is me.
I remember the day that photo was taken. I was dying to go to the loo and just seconds before had been shouting, “For God’s sake, get on with it!” (some things never change, do they?).
One thing that’s changed, though, is Nanna’s gall bladder.
It’s now home to a gallstone the size of a minor planet plus “a host of smaller ones” (sort of like a host of golden daffodils only round and brown).
My doctor told me that lots of people get gallstones, especially if they fit into the category called The Four Fs, which stand for female, fair, 40 and fat.
My doctor is a warm, witty and wonderful man but I must admit that when he came out with that one I nearly summoned up a fifth F and told him to fuck off.
Instead I advised him that I wasn’t fat when I was 40 and that even though I’m moving more towards the lard-arse end of the weight scale than the skinny-girl end, people had yet to start pointing and laughing at me in the street.
Luckily he had good things to tell me about my bowels and we were able to move on.
Anyway, I had my pre-admission appointment at the hospital this morning because in a few weeks my gall bladder and its various stones are being removed.
I’ve decided that the weekend before this happens I’m going to go out to a restaurant with your Grandpa and some friends for a Goodbye Gall Bladder dinner.
It will be nice not to have to cook but, if I had to, I would make these Gingered Chicken Cakes with Coriander Sauce.
If you Google the name of this recipe you’ll find it’s on caterer’s menus all over the world – probably because it’s so easy and impressive and delicious.
It’s from one of my favourite cookbooks – Diva Cooking: Unashamedly Glamorous Party Food by Victoria Blashford-Snell (yes, really) and Jennifer Joyce.
Unfortunately the book’s out of print but if you ever see it on eBay, grab it – it’s a little treasure.
I use 500g chicken breast mince instead of mincing 2 chicken breasts as directed in the recipe.
I also use bought mayonnaise instead of making my own (surprise, surprise). You’ll notice that these chicken cakes are the same colour as my hair when I was 20. How embarrassing is that?

GINGERED CHICKEN CAKES WITH CORIANDER SAUCE

Makes 20 small canapés or 10-12 bigger patties

500g chicken breast mince
45ml (2 tbsp plus 1 tsp) Thai fish sauce
2.5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
3 spring onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
½ tsp sea salt
½ tsp dried chilli flakes/crushed dried chilli
oil (not olive) for frying
mixed salad leaves

CORIANDER SAUCE
2 tbsp mayonnaise
¼ cup fresh coriander, finely chopped
juice and finely grated zest of 1 lime

Make the coriander sauce by mixing together all the ingredients.
Cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge until needed.
For the chicken cakes, put the chicken mince into a big mixing bowl.
Put all the remaining ingredients except for the oil and salad leaves into a mini food processor or blender and process until pureed.
Pour the pureed mixture on top of the chicken mince and mix everything together until well combined.
Form the mixture into patties – small ones for canapés, bigger ones for an entrée or main course.
Coat the bottom of a large frying pan with oil and cook them over medium-high heat for 3 to 5 minutes each side, until cooked through.
Drain the chicken cakes on kitchen paper and serve them on a bed of salad leaves with a bowl of sauce in the middle.
To eat, drizzle some sauce over the chicken cakes and salad.

TODDLER MASTERCHEF

Posted: August 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Casseroles, Chicken, Duck, Nigella Lawson | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear Amelia,
Look what Nanna got you for your second birthday next month.
As I write, it’s winging its way to Albany from the USA, courtesy of Fishpond, which had it reduced from $245 to $101 WITH FREE POSTAGE!
You love helping to cook even though you’re such a little thing. You’ll be beside yourself when you see it.


I just hope that when you’re 35 and you’re reading this blog post, you’ll look up into the ether (which, unfortunately, is where Nanna will be unless she lives to be 92) and say, “Well, Nan, that kiddy kitchen is what put me on the road to my multi-million-dollar cookbook and cooking show deal, not to mention my boutique vineyard with rich husband and unbearably chic bistro attached.”
Or whatever.
This celebrity chef obsession may not last another 33 years.
Who knows? Maybe by the time you’ve grown up, people won’t want to be foodies any more.
Maybe squash players will have made a comeback. Or people will want to be graphic designers again. Or disco dancers.
To be honest, whatever you want to do is fine by me.
But just in case foodies are here to stay, here are a few tips on how to be a ridgy-didge, card-carrying one.
First up, you mustn’t ever buy things, you must source them, and whatever you source must be called “produce”.
Quality is paramount, so everything should be be free-range, organic, seasonal and locally produced and preferably from a farmers’ market, farm-gate food stall, market gardener, orchardist, local fisherperson, enthusiastic smallholder or anywhere else you spot wall-to-wall wankers carrying string bags.
That means no garlic from Argentina and no frozen peas, even if you’ve just worked nine hours straight and are absolutely buggered.
Learn how to pronounce bruschetta. Make risotto. Shave a truffle.
Find out what sous vide means and who Cheong Liew is (clue: not an Asian toilet).
Remember: Nothing says “foodie” like a fridge full of dead dicky birds that are really difficult to source.
I’m talking about guinea fowl, partridge, snipe or even the occasional pink-eared duck.
Here is a picture of the pink-eared duck, which, according to Field and Game Australia Inc, is available for recreational hunting in Victoria, South Australia and the Northern Territory.


Here is a picture of what it would look like if it was cooked in orange sauce.


If you’re unfamiliar with the term dicky bird, click here.
The richly layered lyrics of this song bring back many happy childhood memories for Nanna.
I hope you enjoy them too.
Speaking of dead dicky birds, Nanna cooked the thighs of two of them the other night.
They weren’t free-range, unfortunately, because I haven’t been able to source free-range chicken thighs with skin on and bones in down here in the town that time forgot.
The recipe is Nigella Lawson’s take on a classic dish called Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic.
It uses chicken pieces instead of a whole chook and because the garlic is roasted in its skin, it’s sweet and creamy and not at all overpowering.
It’s a really lovely dish.
Grandpa and I ate it by candlelight then fell asleep in front of a recorded episode of Boardwalk Empire.
Who said romance is dead?

CHICKEN WITH 20 CLOVES OF GARLIC

Serves 2

You’ll find Nigella’s recipe for 4 people here, or in her book, Kitchen, on page 328.
For two people I halved the amount of chicken and garlic but kept the same amount of vermouth for the sauce.

First you preheat the oven to 180C and find a casserole dish that takes 4 skin-on, bones-in chicken thighs in one layer.
It needs to have a lid and be suitable for use on top of the stove as well as in the oven.
Next, finely slice three spring onions, strip the leaves from two sprigs of thyme and separate 20 cloves from a couple of bulbs of garlic (but don’t peel them).
Heat a tablespoon of olive oil over high heat in the casserole dish and cook the chicken thighs on the skin side only until they’re brown.
Remove them to a bowl, lower the heat a little and fry the spring onions and thyme leaves for a couple of minutes.
Chuck in 10 garlic cloves, put the chicken thighs on top (skin-side up), then top these with the other 10 garlic cloves and two whole sprigs of thyme.
Pour 30ml of vermouth or white wine into the pan (I used vermouth) and any chicken juices from the bowl.
Season with salt and pepper, cover with a lid and cook in the oven for 1½ hours.
I served this with mash and some Torbay asparagus that your Grandpa sourced at the local farmers’ market.
It was the first of the season. Wonderful stuff.

CLEANING UP MY ACT

Posted: August 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Lamb, Nigella Lawson, Salad, Spices, Vegetables | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear Amelia,
Here’s a really good northern English word: hacky.
It means filthy or dirty or sometimes just plain old filthy-dirty and it more or less describes the state of Nanna’s house for the past month.
We’ve both been very sick, your Grandpa and I, first with this awful flu that’s been doing the rounds (the one we caught from you over the wedding weekend), then with gastro (me) and a foot infection (Grandpa, who we suspect was bitten by a spider).
All I’ve done for the past month is sleep, whinge, write the occasional blog post, whinge, read, whinge, watch TV, whinge, tell Grandpa to stop whinging and FOR GOD’S SAKE CAN YOU LIMP MORE QUIETLY IT’S GIVING ME A HEADACHE.
The good news is that by Friday I was better, so yesterday I channelled my inner Mrs Sparkle.

I tackled this hacky house of ours with a vacuum cleaner, mop, duster and an array of chemicals that only someone born in the 1950s could truly appreciate.
Which is a good thing because you never know when Barack Obama might pop round.
Your house could look like a Gossip Girl set for 11 months of the year, then that one month you’re feeling like crap and haven’t lifted a finger, the doorbell rings and there he is standing at your front door with Michelle by his side and 10 secret service agents crawling through your rose bushes.
Laugh if you like but this is exactly what happened to Sarah Jessica Parker a few weeks back.


Luckily SJP didn’t have the flu and she had Vogue editor Anna Wintour to help her deal with the dog hair on the couches.
But it still can’t have been easy having Barack and Michelle Obama plus 48 other intimate friends wandering through your home and wondering if that pubic hair by the toilet was fresh and presidential or had been there for the past three weeks.
I say “48 other intimate friends” but what I actually mean is 48 people who have paid $40,000 each to be in your house for the evening and meet the President of the United States of America.
I read all about it on the Internet during one of the brief periods when I wasn’t unconscious or delirious with illness.
Sarah Jessica Parker held a fundraiser for Barack Obama at her brownstone (which is a very desirable house) in the West Village (which is in Noo Yawk).
According to the nastier New York tabloids, Anna Wintour made SJP move out some of her furniture because SJP’s taste runs to shabby chic and Anna thought it was more the former than the latter.
Here are some pictures that were taken before the big event.
This is Anna Wintour.


Here’s some furniture being removed from SJP’s house.


And here are the secret service people being secretive in SJP’s front garden.


I’ve no idea what sort of food was served at the event but if it had been me I would have given them Nigella’s Indian-rubbed Lamb Chops with Butternut, Rocket and Pine Nut Salad.


This is the first thing I wanted to cook when I felt better because it’s not only delicious and light, it is also a perfect combination of flavours.
It’s from Nigella’s book, Kitchen, and I can’t give you the recipe verbatim because of copyright reasons.
But here’s the gist of it.
The lamb chops are dead easy.
Just grab a large plate and mix together 1 teaspoon each of ground cumin, ground coriander and ground ginger, one-eighth of a teaspoon each of ground cloves and ground cinnamon, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and 3 teaspoons of sea salt flakes.
This amount of spice mix is enough for 12 lamb loin chops so I just made up half quantities.
Press each side of the lamb chops into the spice mix on the plate and cook them over medium heat in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan.
Three to four minutes per side should be enough.
You’ll find the recipe for the Butternut, Rocket and Pine Nut Salad here but this is basically what I do for two people.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Take half a butternut pumpkin, peel and de-seed it, then cut it into slices the thickness of your thumb.
Cut each of these slices into 4 then tip the cubes into a bowl in which you’ve whisked together 1 tablespoon of olive oil and half a teaspoon each of sea salt flakes, ground turmeric and ground ginger.
Coat the butternut cubes in the spice mix then tip them into a baking tray lined with baking paper (but don’t clean out the bowl).
Roast the butternut in the oven for 30-40 minutes.
While that’s happening, toast 3 tablespoons of pine nuts in a small non-stick frying pan over medium-low heat.
This should only take a couple of minutes. Keep an eye on them because they burn really easily. Leave the pine nuts to cool.
Put 2 tablespoons of sultanas in the same bowl you used for the pumpkin, cover with 30ml of just-boiled water from the kettle and leave to cool.
Once cool, whisk in 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and 1 tablespoon of olive oil.
Put 50g rocket or other salad leaves on big plate or in a bowl.
Scatter the roasted butternut on top, sprinkle over the toasted pine nuts then spoon over the sultana dressing, making sure the sultanas are distributed evenly.
Serve toot sweet, as they say in Noo Yawk.
Note: Nige’s recipe calls for sherry vinegar and golden sultanas but I didn’t have them so I used balsamic vinegar and ordinary sultanas instead (my inner perfectionist’s voice was telling me to pick out sultanas that were the most golden in colour but as usual I ignored it).
I also doubled the amount of vinegar.