July 2006 Archives

There's no nonsense about Judith Tabron. Starting in the restaurant industry as a 16-year-old apprentice, she worked her way up to become the co-owner of Soul, an acclaimed, successful bar and bistro situated at the Viaduct Harbour in Auckland. On stage at last year's Savour New Zealand - she co-presented Greg Malouf's class on Middle Eastern Magic - her straight talking, take-no-prisoners attitude was very refreshing. She is, as she says herself, a leader rather than a follower, and her interest in new trends and different cuisines came through strongly at the symposium as it does in this, her first cookbook.

Tabron is an enthusiastic advocate of the practice of bringing other chefs into the kitchen and the book showcases the most popular dishes served at Soul alongside recipes from a selection of visiting guest chefs - Melbourne-based Bill Marchetti, Greg Malouf and Stephanie Alexander; Chicago's Charlie Trotter; Soul maitre d' and TV presenter Geeling; and Philip Johnson of e'cco in Brisbane. Beautiful photographs by Stephen Robinson illustrate recipes using a variety of unusual combinations and techniques - Caramelised Belgian Endive filled with Goat's Cheese with Crisp Almonds and Dates, Potato and Goat's Cheese Terrine with Rocket Salad and Lemon Vinaigrette, Tea Petal-Rubbed Akaora Aalmon served alongside Rhubarb and Orange Salad with Mirin and Sake Dressing. Tabron comments on each dish, whether about suppliers (Tom Bates of Akaroa Salmon), influences (trips to San Francisco, other chefs) and stories about the restaurant.

Soul is a bit more cheffy (by which I mean that many of the dishes have far too many components for my home kitchen) than I normally like but the ideas here are exciting and the recipes can easily be broken down to their constituent parts. Worth more than just a quick look, especially if you get caught - as I have - on the Greg Malouf-influenced recipe for John Dory on Parsnip Mash with Lentil, Shallot and Olive Vinaigrette. Time to dig out that Ras el Hanout again!

Soul by Judith Tabron & Friends is published by Random House New Zealand.

On Friday night two friends were arriving in from Cambridge in time for a late supper. They didn't arrive until after 9pm, fortunately, as the previous night at Mackerel and an after-work engagement party ensured that I didn't get home until around half seven. Walking home from town I nipped into Spiceland to pick up some pita breads and a tin of dolmades (rice stuffed vine leaves) and together with a few house basics - potatoes, carrots, chorizo, eggs - decided on a simple tapas-style meal with a Mediterranean flavour.

Once cooked, a whiz in the food processor turned the carrots into Spicy Carrot Dip, which I served with the pita breads and alongside some a bowl of natural yoghurt, sprinkled generously with ground cumin. The potatoes, chorizo and eggs all went into one of my current favourite dishes - a Potato and Chorizo Tortilla or Spanish omelette. I got over my long-term fear of the potato in New Zealand and now there's often a bag of organic spuds in the shopping bag. They have to be waxy though, I'm not yet ready to move on to the beloved Irish floury potatoes! When there are potatoes in the house, tortilla - or, as it is known in Italy, frittata - is a great standby. It doesn't take long to make and prefers not to be served hot, happily sitting around at room temperature until it is needed.

If you haven't had a chance to cook the potatoes ahead of time and you're boiling them as part of your evening preparation, make sure you spare yourself the washing-up and cook them the same saucepan as the carrots that you're using in the dip.

By the time our guests arrived I would have been ready but, emboldened by my success at getting everything together, at the last minute I decided to make a cake...and that's a story for another day!

No photos this time. The digital camera seems to have given up the ghost at the moment so we're imageless. Hopefully we'll figure out what's ailing it soon.

Thursday was a searingly hot day in Dublin and, even come evening time, there was little respite from the heat in the city center. Sun-warmed crowds pooled outside bars and restaurants, Mediterranean-style. It was not an evening to be indoors so, when the Boyfriend and I arrived for a 7.30pm booking at Grafton Street fish restaurant Mackerel and spotted seats outside on the narrow balcony, we grabbed them as soon as we could hot-foot across the room.

Mackerel is located upstairs in the old Bewley's Café premises - now taken over by another branch of the becoming-ubiquitous Café Bar Deli - and it keeps to the dark-wood Bewley's template with smart green marble tables. The tiny outdoors area had just enough space for side-by-side seating on low stools, with a simple wooden shelf, just wide enough to hold the plates, as a table. But the main draw, apart from the light, refreshing breeze, was being able to almost invisibly observe the bustle of a busy Grafton Street.

A selection of good bread - slices of tomato and fennel, a dense brown bread and some seed and fruit loaf - arrived with the menus; a just-printed page of that day's catch and a regular menu of starters, desserts, cocktails and coffees. The Boyfriend was in fish-heaven, deliberating over sole, cod, organic salmon and John Dory. Eventually he decided on a Grilled Fillet of Plaice with Leek Sauce while I went for Grilled Whole Mackerel with a Chorizo Crust. A glass of crisp Manzanilla La Gitana with a bowl of plain olives served as a starter and then onwards to the fish end of thing.

One small problem: I had never had mackerel before and, minutes after my lovingly prepared piscine pal arrived in front of me, discovered that it wasn't really my thing. Fortunately, it was much more to the taste of the (long-suffering) Boyfriend so we swapped plates, he to deal with the small bones and rich flesh of the mackerel while I discovered that delicate plaice, and particularly its creamy accompanying sauce, more agreeable. A dish of vegetables - red onions, cherry tomatoes and potatoes, all roasted and served with some buttered new potatoes and deliciously crunchy green beans - and some extra bread served to mop up the juices. We were less adventurous on the wine side of things, choosing a French Sauvignon Blanc (Le Clou Cotes Du Duras, 2004) which was pleasant although nothing special.

Although it was a light meal, the wine and the heat kept us from ordering any deserts, despite the Boyfriend dallying over the menu and seriously considering their Chocolate Fudge Cake. I let him think while I trekked down two flights of stairs to the basement bathrooms which, annoyingly, had a woman sitting outside to direct customers to the appropriate area (what? Signs aren't enough any more?) with a tip jar placed prominently before her. This was unnecessary and annoying. There are many pubs around Dublin that I refuse to enter because of similar guardians and I wouldn't like to have to add Mackerel to that list, especially as my espresso was an impeccable example of its kind and our eventual bill came to a very affordable €69.20. Fantastic fish - although I wouldn't go for the eponymous choice next time - the perfect table and great service. Now, if they could just sort out the toilet situation...

€69.20 paid for a dish of olives, glass of sherry, two main courses, a bottle of wine and one expresso. Mackerel is on the first floor of Bewley's at 78 Grafton Street, Dublin 2. Phone: 01-6727719.
www.mackerel.ie

It's the colour that catches your eye first. The bold pink and red cover of Tessa Kiros' Apples for Jam is immediately distinctive, particularly with its eye-catching photo of a pair of red, well-worn children's shoes. And colour is hugely important in this book as Tessa and her colour-coded recipes explore the spectrum of childhood through chapters that include gold and monochrome, pink, yellow and red.

From simple, wholesome dishes like Broccoli Soup (green), Wholemeal Apricot and Apple Pie (orange) or Potato and Yoghurt Salad (white), Tessa also covers decadent-looking Brownies, sandwiched with whipped cream, strawberries and iced with a simple chocolate ganache (brown), an easy pre-made Pandoro Birthday Cake (multicolour) and Chocolate Toffee Nut Squares (stripes). Each coloured chapter comes complete with a childhood memory - a belief in toys coming awake at night, the ice cream man and his "sweet, chocolatey music", water-drinking competitions - just one of the many things that make this cookbook so sweetly evocative. The recipes are no less attractive, without being too difficult, and my copy of the book is flecked with a host of little post-its, marking the dishes that I'm intent on trying in the near future.

As she detailed in her first book, the lovely Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes, Tessa is half-Finnish and half-Greek-Cypriot. Her upbringing in South Africa and travels throughout the world, cooking in London, Sydney, Athens and Mexico, have all informed the food that she presents here. She now lives in Tuscany with her Italian husband and two daughters, hence her second seasonal book, Twelve: A Tuscan Cookbook, and the Italian influence is strongly evident, particularly in the tomato- and pasta-heavy red section.

As with all Tessa's cookbooks, Apples for Jam is a lavish production. It's a satisfyingly chunky book (400-plus pages) with mouthwatering (yet realistic) photos of food, children's drawings reproduced in full colour, bright wallpaper designs and a useful pink satin bookmark. Charming and down-to-earth, this is a book with both style and substance.

Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros is published by Murdoch Books.

Ireland has recently been going through a spell of glorious weather with near-constant sunshine and temperatures in the mid to late 20s and so I've not stepped near the kitchen for the last while. Cooking is mostly out of the question and baking has been abandoned for the moment - very little Brown Soda Bread gets made these days! - as our kitchen is just too small to cope with the heat of the cooker and/or oven. Meals at home are mostly light salad affairs or, given half a chance on these long, warm evenings, consist of picnics eaten while sprawled on the grass in one of our local parks.

Depending on who's out of work first, the Boyfriend or myself pick up the fixings from Hennessy's Food Store, Donnybrook Fair or Morton's of Ranelagh - a substantial bread, like Blazing Salads' organic sourdough, some savoury-sweet olives and semi-sundried tomatoes, a chunk of pungent oozy cheese, thin pliable slices of salami or on-the-bone ham, maybe a scoop of Donnybrook Fair's intensely meaty chicken liver paté, a handful of sweet-scented cherry tomatoes and a few dollops of tapenade, hummus or pesto. For desert, I'm a particular fan of Glenilen Farm's screwtop jars of natural yogurt layered with fruit compote.

We grab our rug, a nicely chilled bottle of wine, some books and the picnic bag - already crammed full of lightweight cutlery and melamine delph - and hotfoot it to either Belgrave Square or Herbert Park to read in the sun while balancing mouthfuls of salami, brie, tomatoes and pesto on top of roughly hacked slices of bread. Food always seems to taste much nicer when eaten outdoors in the sunshine. When the sun starts to drift below the horizon, it's time to pack up and wander homewards, nicely toasted and full of good food. We might bemoan the lack of a garden, patio or balcony to make use of in summertime, but there's definitely ways of getting around that!

Ireland has recently been going through a spell of glorious weather with near-constant sunshine and temperatures in the mid to late 20s and so I've not stepped near the kitchen for the last while. Cooking is mostly out of the question and baking has been abandoned for the moment - very little Brown Soda Bread gets made these days! - as our kitchen is just too small to cope with the heat of the cooker and/or oven. Meals at home are mostly light salad affairs or, given half a chance on these long, warm evenings, consist of picnics eaten while sprawled on the grass in one of our local parks.

Depending on who's out of work first, the Boyfriend or myself pick up the fixings from Hennessy's Food Store, Donnybrook Fair or Morton's of Ranelagh - a substantial bread, like Blazing Salads' organic sourdough, some savoury-sweet olives and semi-sundried tomatoes, a chunk of pungent oozy cheese, thin pliable slices of salami or on-the-bone ham, maybe a scoop of Donnybrook Fair's intensely meaty chicken liver paté, a handful of sweet-scented cherry tomatoes and a few dollops of tapenade, hummus or pesto. For desert, I'm a particular fan of Glenilen Farm's screwtop jars of natural yogurt layered with fruit compote.

We grab our rug, a nicely chilled bottle of wine, some books and the picnic bag - already crammed full of lightweight cutlery and melamine delph - and hotfoot it to either Belgrave Square or Herbert Park to read in the sun while balancing mouthfuls of salami, brie, tomatoes and pesto on top of roughly hacked slices of bread. Food always seems to taste much nicer when eaten outdoors in the sunshine. When the sun starts to drift below the horizon, it's time to pack up and wander homewards, nicely toasted and full of good food. We might bemoan the lack of a garden, patio or balcony to make use of, but there's definitely ways of getting around that!

When out shopping - especially in ethnic food shops - I'm a demon for picking up new and unusual ingredients that I've no idea how to use. I just see something in Dublin's Asian Market, say, or - very especially - Middle Eastern shop Spiceland that looks interesting and, before I know it, it's in my basket and I'm thinking: "didn't I see a recipe for that somewhere recently?" Hence my food cupboards are filled with lots of things that keep getting pushed to the back and never used. Just a few of the unused items that are taking up space in the cupboard at the moment include:

Sheets of dried Apricots: for making Claudia Roden's Amardine desert
Miso paste: I like the idea of miso soup but, after the first experiment, not so much the reality...
Rosewater and orange blossom water: for other A New Book of Middle Eastern Food recipes. Claudia Roden has a lot to answer for!
Tom Yum paste: for making the addictive hot and sour Thai soup. Sometime.
Dried verbena leaves: I loved the cup of verbena tea that I got at a Vegetarian Society demonstration in Christchurch but I've yet to try infusing these leaves for myself.
Ebly: still waiting to be turned into salads.
Sumac: brought back to Ireland after it spent most of last year sitting in my NZ pantry. It's still sitting.
Mung dal: it's not really the time of the year for cooking dal, is it?
Pistacchio halva: for eating with coffee, except I don't drink coffee at home in the evenings.
Anchovies: because Nigel keeps telling me that I'll like them. This is my second jar. The first remained, unopened, behind me in NZ.

After reading a Middle Eastern edition of Cuisine magazine, I also stocked my NZ pantry with a spur-of-the-moment pomegranate molasses buy which sat there...and sat there...and sat there...until I had to return to Ireland and abandon it. But, newly invigorated by my reading of A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, this was an ingredient that I was determined to find uses for.

Its first outing in my house was when I cooked a Moroccan Lamb Tagine dinner for the then very pregnant Writer and her husband. Wine wasn't on the menu for her that night so I took a tip from Cuisine (their What to do with...... ingredients guide series is invaluable) and made a refreshing Pomegranate Cordial by mixing the pomegranate molasses with some sugar, lemon juice and diluting it with water and lots of ice cubes. So far, so successful. But one idea doesn't necessarily make an ingredient useful and the elegant bottle of dark brown, sweet and sour syrup sat there, ready to catch my eye every time I opened the door of the cupboard. There's only so much cordial a girl can drink.

Further investigation into A New Book of Middle Eastern Food and a recipe from Casa Moro by Sam and Sam Clark gave me inspiration one night this week. I had wanted to use the molasses in a salad dressing but previous attempts in New Zealand had not been particularly memorable. But I did like the look of the Clark's pomegranate molasses dressing -and the idea of trying raw cauliflower! Accompanied with Claudia Roden's Spicy Carrot Dip (a pile of carrots at the bottom of the fridge needed to be used up), some crisply toasted pita breads and a bowl of natural yoghurt this salad made a lovely light supper and an even nicer following-day lunch. Bulgur can sometimes be a little bland but the dressing was pleasantly tangy while the cauliflower and chickpeas added some different enjoyable textures to the salad. Some toasted pumpkin seeds or walnuts sprinkled over next time, as in Roden's Bulgur Salad With Pomegranate Dressing and Toasted Nuts, would also add a good crunchy counterpoint to the other ingredients. Pomegranate molasses experiments a triumphant success. Now, time to turn my attention to some of the other ingredients bulging out of my food cupboards.

My friend the Film Critic had a birthday last week and so I took it into my head, late last Tuesday night, to make him a birthday cake. Wanting something simple - and that I already had the ingredients for in the house - I decided on a straightforward Gâteau au Yaourt, which seems to be a French national dish. I first came across this cake on Clotilde's Chocolate & Zucchini blog and, subsequently, it also cropped up in Christelle Le Ru's Simply Irresistible French Desserts and also as a Frenchwoman's contribution to the Moneystown school's charity cookbook. It was evidentially time to try it out.

What originally caught my eye was the fact that you tipped a tub of yoghurt into a bowl and then simply used the pot to measure out the rest of the ingredients. How easy - and how flexible - is that? We always have a big tub of natural yoghurt in the house so the main ingredient was already at hand and the others - eggs, sugar, sunflower oil, flour and baking powder - are also pantry staples. As my tub of natural yoghurt was, at 500ml, much too big I decided to use a 250ml NZ cup as my measuring tool, scaling everything else appropriately. I didn't want the cake to be too plain so I added some lemon zest, pistachio nuts, vanilla and muscovado sugar to the mixture. I was also going to ice it with lemon glacé icing (just a mixture of lemon juice and icing sugar) until I discovered what little icing sugar was in the house. Already half ways through making the icing, I instead used the mixture as a lemony syrup to pour over the hot cake so that it soaked through, leaving a bittersweet crust on top.

Mixed in minutes and in the oven a few seconds later, the eventual Lemon and Pistachio Yogurt Cake was a resounding success. It had a tasty piquancy from the yoghurt, which was heightened by the addition of both lemon rind and juice. I got rather distracted while preparing the pistachios - so difficult to shell them and not eat them! - so rather less that I would have liked made it into the cake. As Clotilde said, this is a great any-time-of-the-day cake but I must confess that my favourite way of eating it is to crumble a slice over some ripe nectarines, sliced into a bowl, and top with a dollop of natural yoghurt. Sweet and soft, fruity and creamy all together. I eat it for breakfast...

I'm at two-day Irish music festival Oxegen this weekend, although fortunately - considering the rain and muddy conditions in Punchestown racecourse yesterday - not camping. The less said about food there the better! Normal service will resume next week.

None of the much loved Enid Blyton's Famous Five books that I read as a child were complete without a picnic - ham rolls, hard boiled eggs, slabs of fruit cake, tinned pears and, of course, lashings and lashings of ginger beer. The only kind of ginger drink that I came across in Ireland was ginger ale, ginger beer's much sweeter and less spicy sibling. I wasn't too impressed.

Years later, long after my Famous Five fixation had passed, I came across ginger beer (along with many other ginger products) in New Zealand and I became addicted. I don't normally buy soft drinks but, especially with the long journeys in the South Island, ginger beer was the drink of choice to keep both driver and passenger going. A non-alcoholic drink that is refreshingly tart and not too sweet, there were many brands available but the variety that I most loved was an import from Australia called Bundaberg.

Sold in a distinctive squat brown glass bottle, it had a ring-pull metal top which I never quite got the hang of. Still, that was only a small and easily manageable (get the Boyfriend to open the bottle!) drawback so, when I unexpectedly came across a small display of Bundaberg ginger beer in my local supermarket - tricky top or no - I was delighted. It's the equivalent of discovering a packet of Tayto cheese & onion Irish crisps in your local Christchurch dairy. Now all I need to complete the NZ nostalgia trip is the faded green, leaky, tank-like 22-year-old Honda Accord that we drove throughout NZ...

I have to agree with Ice Cream Ireland's comment on the incongruous presence of Starbucks at last weekend's Taste of Dublin. It's difficult to see what they have to do with food at all and in Dublin in particular. RTÉ 2FM DJ Rick O'Shea also writes of his experiences at A Taste Of Dublin (Or Two, Or Three.... Maybe Dessert Too...) and there's debate over at the forum on Ernie Whalley's forkncork.com. While you're there, it's worth taking a look at the conflicting opinions on Fallon & Byrne.

This is the perfect book for any foodie who's ever spent hours puzzling over unfamiliar ingredients in their local delicatessen or ethnic food shop. Glynn Christian, originally from New Zealand, has been a food writer and broadcaster in England for many years, and as a result, has a rare international perspective. His breadth of experience also includes setting up the legendary Mr Christian's Delicatessen in London's Notting Hill in the 1970s.

With a cover quote from Nigel Slater - "one of the only ten books you need" (I'd be interested in finding out the names of the other nine!) - Real Flavours does live up to its subtitle: The Handbook of Gourmet and Deli Ingredients. From possum to pine nut oil, goulash to grockle (an obscure sea vegetable), this book has information on all the foodstuffs you could imagine - and plenty that you haven't even come across yet. You could comfortably spend a few weeks wandering around the riches of the herbs, spices and flavourings chapter.

But be careful. You may open Real Flavours to look up a particular item but soon find yourself sucked in by this greedy gourmet's no-nonsense, opinionated and entertaining writing. An essential addition to every epicurean's kitchen.

Real Flavours: The Handbook of Gourmet and Deli Ingredients by Glynn Christian is published by Grub Street Publishing.