Learning to Trust Again

I’m an average cook, and I like cooking, but mainly because I get to eat home-cooked food at the end of the exercise. Hit-and-miss might be a good way to describe my kitchen exploits, but I'd give anything a go, and if it didn’t work I’d shrug it off and pull out some pre-packaged processed glop, like ‘Easy Mac’, which I’d enjoy anyway.

However, over the last few months, I’ve had a Crisis of Cooking Confidence. It started the day my oven went psycho, ‘my oven’ being our ex-landlord’s oven, and our ex-landlord being Mr. Never-Fix-It.
On that fateful day, my oven - an unpredictable rebel who’d always lived by his own rules - decided black was the new golden brown and turned my lasagne to charcoal within minutes and set the smoke detectors howling.

It became a tumultuous relationship from then on, and many burnt muffins, blackened casseroles and embarrassing hosting moments later, I knew he wasn't good for me, but I just couldn't walk away.

He even started coming between me and my friends. Example: One day when a pal dropped by for lunch, I made his favourite pasta dish (see recipe for The Best Pasta Bake in the World), but five minutes after putting it in the oven, the smell of burning filled the house, and when I opened the oven door, I saw black. When the black smoke cleared out of my eyes, I saw more black. When I pulled the pasta bake out of the oven, I realised the black was the top of the pasta bake. It wasn't a pasta bake, it was a pasta incinerate.

He had become a monster.

If you're familiar with Disney's Beauty and the Beast, recall the scene where the mob is storming the castle and the oven rears up out of the shadows with burners blazing. 

Eventually I knew I had to leave what I realised was really just an investment-property-quality appliance with no long-term prospects. I made do with unsatisfactory stovetop cooking and meaningless takeaway for some months. Was it him? Was it me? I became a vulnerable shadow of my former confident, average-but-jolly-cook self.


Finally I became strong enough to walk away. We moved on, into our brand new home, where I met my new, middle-of-the-range oven named Simpson. I flipped nervously through my cookbooks then ordered takeaway for the whole first week. It was only through watching my husband bake a perfect batch of delicate meringues that I felt like I was ready to learn to trust again...

Today I baked a batch of Anzacs, just like in the good ol’ days, as a thank you gift for someone who did us a favour:

Looks like the start of a beautiful friendship.

Christmas Feasting, Parts III & IV (amalgamated)

The final two feasts in this Christmas series are amalgamated because they were both family feasts occurring on Christmas Day. They were both the whole hog; traditional, decadent turkey feasts with roasted veggies and all the trimmings, and to say I was stuffed like the turkeys I feasted on by the end of the day is an understatement indeed.


Christmas honourable mentions:

-    American cooking. I don’t remember most of what we ate for dinner at my family-in-laws' because I was too distracted by a maple ham. I ate that ham and only that ham for lunch the next day. Why waste stomach space on bread and other sandwich fillings? You can eat them any day.

-    A Terry’s Chocolate Orange I got in my stocking from hubby. Am I the only person in the world who likes these?? They’re like Pollywaffles – no-one actually knows anybody who’s eaten one.  

- Mum's pav. It's legendary, and a family recipe I must master. Although I'm seeing my third attempt resulting in a sunken mess before Egg Man waltzes in and produces a masterpiece. I can hack it, I can hack it.

-    My brother and sister-in-law’s shortbread cookies on Christmas Eve. Who knew shortbread could be moist and slightly chewy?? I will never tolerate that ghastly boxed butter-crumbs stuff again.



-    A Huey’s Lemon Squeezer I got as a stocking stuffer from my sister-in-law. I call it this because I was first alerted to it when I spotted Huey using one. Especially useful for casual squeeze-overs. Just make sure to put the lemon half in cut side down, even though know-it-alls who have clearly NOT watched Huey will try to tell you it goes the other way. They sell 'em at the General Trader for around ten bucks-ish.

I really struck it lucky in the immediate families department. I become especially aware of this at Christmas. I've got my own problems like everyone, sure, but my family isn't one of them, and I don't take this for granted. There are no hugely high-maintenance individuals, train wrecks or trouble-makers, and in fact, we all get along really well and genuinely seem to like each other, within my initial family and my in-law family. I am truly grateful.

So, it's all over and done for another year - the culture crushed me, the retail world fed on me and I revelled in the circus along with everyone else. Now all I have to do is figure out what exactly to do come July 25th...

Christmas Feasting, Part II

Feast the second is a tradition with the long-time mutual friends we’ve been doing life with the last decade or more. They’re savvy, creative and deeply sensitive individuals who appreciate our culture because it's so like theirs, our history because they were there, our values because they share them and they understand our life in a way no-one else can. 

I have no photos of the lamb falling off the bone and vegies roasted to perfection by our hosts, nor the drinks, nor the flashing Christmas earrings and Santa badges, nor my husband's stellar triple chocolate semifreddo. Not one photo of the food. This is unfortunate. The best I can come up with is a picture of a small, white naked man:

Speaking of the triple chocolate semifreddo, I've had a revelation about this guy I married. He is an egg genius. Put an egg in his hands - magic happens. Many have marvelled at the egg nog he makes every Christmas, his semifreddo flabbergasts, my omelettes are not even in the same league as his, and the first time he tried making meringues they came out of the oven emanating a pearlescent glow. Even our one-year-old son knows it - when my husband makes him golden, fluffy scrambled eggs, not one scrap ends up on the floor. He is the Egg Man. I love you, Egg Man.

Ho ho, two feasts to go!

Christmas Feasting, Part I

Christmas is a time of internal struggle within my soul, due to the inescapable fact that what may have started out as a sacred celebration by Christians has been turned into a circus, and we’ve all bought into it. We've been indoctrinated by the irresistible forces of culture and tradition, sucked into the retail world’s annual feeding frenzy and brainwashed into accepting a version of a holy festival that’s so convoluted with humanism we can hardly recognise it...

Now, before I get too high horsey and the drama becomes overwhelming, I enjoy and embrace the superficial aspects of Christmas as much as the next Joe, which therefore makes me a hypocrite.
I know - we need to have an ‘Xmas’ and a ‘Christmas’ instead of trying to pretend they’re the same thing. Xmas can stay December 25th so we can get all worked up about happiness together, and Christmas can be in July, say July 25th to make it easy to remember. Done.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s focus on the food.

I’m privileged enough to indulge in four fine feasts each Christmas, and this year they all happened to fall within five days of each other. The idea that there is such thing as too much food did cross my mind at about 7pm on Christmas night, but the food was a joy, and the company, the best. Happily, I can appreciate my nearest and dearest not just because they’re there and they love me, but because they’re also great people.

Feast the first was a tradition we have with a group of school buddies – intelligent, wise-cracking straight talkers and the people I laugh the hardest with. Whenever we congregate from our corners of Melbourne, whether for monthly world food dinners or special events, there’s never a shortage of fun or debate fodder (ie. arguments) and there’s always that priceless feeling of homecoming. The chemistry that’s kept us coming back for more all these years always lends itself to a merry Christmas, and a merry one it was…

We started with antipasto, before a decadent seafood spread breezily prepared by our host on a half-functioning stove and presented with her trademark flair. Market produce, fresh flavours; very Aussie.



Dessert was a meringue stack made by my husband from a recipe they serve at my old work, Werribee Park Receptions. Meringue discs alternating with layers of fluffy chocolate and strawberry mousse, finished with passionfruit pulp and a berry coulis... this is top three desserts stuff, right here.


I’m not going to say there were times when my manager at Werribee Park may have squirreled away two of these drool-worthy desserts in his office, which we consumed with great gusto during our break between whispered sweet nothings and stolen kisses… I’m not going to say that. But I will say my manager was my husband so you can un-raise those eyebrows and put down the phone to your sister.

My contribution to this feast was Turkish Delight and Pistachio Truffles, which can be seen in the photo as the little white Christmas-pudding type things at the front. Fiddly, but amazing flavours if, like me, you're into Turkishy Delighty sort of things. The recipe is from Taste.com.au.

Ho ho ho, three feasts to go!

Summertime Salutations

I've been without an internet connection for the last month or more, courtesy of Telstra’s incompetence, so I wasn’t able to document my summer adventures, particularly Christmas, which was absolutely gastronormous. So I'm just going to let the backblog flow, because it would be a shame to let so much food go undiscussed, un-dwelt-upon and uncredited to those to whom credit is due.
I hope you've been enjoying gorging celebratory summer eating as much as I have.