I Made Food!

I made coconut and chocolate slice and so can you

For the longest time I had an irrational dislike for Bill Granger, the blonde haired, ultra white toothed, v-neck t-shirt wearing Australian cook. I maintained this dislike through several enjoyable visits to his eponymous breakfast themed restaurant in Surry Hills. He seemed a little grating, perhaps. The sort of early rising type that has a nine hour ocean swim before grabbing a quick soy latte and rolling around on their millions. To be fair, I’m not sure if this was the reasoning I had at the time, or is some post facto attempt at justifying irrationality.

Recently, however, the cracks have started to appear around this dislike. It was almost a two pronged charm offensive: I started to find him as a character less objectionable, while appreciating his food even more. His latest TV show, Bill’s Tasty Weekends, helped me move from a position of general peevishness to one of fond approval.

Since going through this volte-face, I’ve made quite a few of his recipes. I’m struck by their simplicity and deliciousness. He rarely asks you to do much, so when he does ask you to go a slight effort you are more than happy to do so.

I think there are a few kinds of cookbook authors: those that get deliciousness in 4 or 6 ingredients, à la Bill, and those that get deliciousness in 15 or 20 ingredients, à la Ottolenghi. And of course that are those that can not get an appreciable level of deliciousness no matter how many steps or how many ingredients they subject one to. 

This recipe for coconut and chocolate slice embodies the best of Bill Granger’s style.

Find a mixing bowl. Even though I have somehow managed to accumulate sets of both, I have a marked preference for glass over stainless steel. In our kitchen, which can sometimes be rather dim, anything that spreads light rather than traps it greedily has to be appreciated. Plus there is something vaguely appealing about a nice piece of Pyrex glass.

While you’re deciding what your choice in mixing bowls says about you, preheat the oven to 180 units of heat. In the old talk, this is Gas Mark Kipling.

In the mixing bowl dump—with the grace of a culinary ballerina—an entire bag of desiccated coconut (250 grams) and much caster sugar (220 grams.) Now melt cheerful butter (butter has always struck me as the happiest of all cooking fats) (100 grams) and allow to cool.

While cooling whisk 2 eggs for a few moments. Then add the molten, cooled butter and the discombobulated eggs to the mixing bowl. Mix up with a wooden spoon, here used in its proper context, rather than reminding one of primary school sports carnivals.

I don’t like breaking up chocolate. It melts and shards and splinters, but we must suffer for our art, even for the simple art of Bill. Take some 70% good chocolate (150 grams) and chop and chop and chop. Once rendered into elegantly chaotic pieces, stir it into the coconutty mixture.

Before you’ve done any of this line a baking tray with baking paper. Now, take that pre-lined tray and throw in your slice mixture, pressing it down until it resembles Bondi Beach (golden yellow) after a thunderstorm (interspersed with brown nuggets). Put into the oven, cook 20 minutes, or until it looks golden enough. Cool for a little in the tin.

Cut up into small pieces, eat a few pieces, let the rest cool.

Simple. Delicious. Goes well with coffee or tea or spare time or before catching a train or while thinking about what to make for dinner.

Thanks, Bill. Thill. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.

I made spag bol and so can you

Spaghetti bolognese is a dish tied to memory. As a kid I remember one of my favourite meals was the rich beefy, garlicky, and tomatoey sauce over playfully yellow spaghetti. Now as a bigger kid, my appreciation for the dish only grows. And of course, all the versions I make only seem to pale in comparison to the memory of dear old Mum’s.

It is almost a painful cliche of food writing that one shares such a memory. Despite this, it often fails to leave any sort of positive impression in the other person. It’s sort of like talking about your dreams. Interesting for you, but dull for the person you’re talking at.

Aside from the fact that everyone has a memory of the dish, everyone also has a different way to make it. A staggering combination of meat, vegetables, herbs, flavourings and methods. And unless the dish is made with just the right combination of flavours, it will trigger a reaction that feels a little wrong, rather like rubbing velvet against your teeth—or analogy that seems more familiar to you. 

But it’s a dish recognised as being delicious, regardless of the mental baggage with which one approaches the meal. So, allez cusine!

Dice two or three medium to large onions in an average sized diced. Neither too small, nor too big. Aim to dice in an altogether Zen fashion. Become one with the onions.

Start sautéing the onion in a suitably solid pan. Toss in salt. Onions need salt as much as tea needs biscuits.

While the onions are having their fun—try to ignore their laughter, which to untrained ears, actually sounds like tears—dice two celery stalks and two carrots into rather small pieces.

When the onions are soft and shiny and maybe slightly coloured, evacuate them to a bowl and sauté the celery and carrots. Turn up the heat, and even let them get a little brown around the edges. Allow them to join the onions in a bowl when done.

Now cook half a kilo or so of beef mince. A mixture of beef and pork is quite nice, but not always necessary. Do it in small batches over high heat to try and avoid the meat stewing in mince juice. Unless you’re especially pedantic with the ‘small batches’ instruction you’ll likely run into some juices, but the aim is to avoid the disappointment sad grey flabby mince as much as possible.

With the last batch of beef mince, add as many crushed cloves of garlic as you please (5 is a good start) and two or three smooshed up with a fork anchovies. One wonders how something so disgusting—the anchovy—can add such deliciousness to a meal.

When that’s all done good and proper, and if you live in a household where everyone likes red wine—or you are a more accomplished wine drinker—deglaze the pan with a good glass or two.

Then dump in the delicious things: one can of tomatoes, a bottle of passata, four bay leaves, one cup of beef stock, a small miscellany of dried herbs (I used a few pinches of thyme and rosemary) and a few dashes of w-sauce, just for kicks. Add ground black pepper, too. Reinsert the onions, carrots and celery and give everything a jolly good mix.

Put a lid on, set the stove to a suitably low heat, and go away for an hour or so, stirring and tasting when the mood strikes. It’s ready when it has reduced a little and has that look that further cooking would yield diminishing returns.

Make pasta. Boiling water. Lots of salt. Time. Drain. Spaghetti works very well. Barilla makes a fine spaghetti.

Just before you serve, add one or two tablespoons of red wine vinegar to give it a bit of a lift, and a wee bit o’ butter as insurance against not having high cholesterol later on in life.

Serve generous helpings topped with freshly grated parmesan and more pepper. A side salad and perhaps a slice of toast rubbed with garlic is practically obligatory.

Save the leftovers—of which there will be plenty—for making lasagna, more spaghetti, or surreptitiously scooping on to bread as a snack.

I made chicken noodle soup and so can you

Your body is a battlefield. Instead of explosions and gunshots, however, cells burst and are consumed by other cells. It would be very exciting if our eyes had one of those magnifying wheels like on microscopes. But alas, we are denied that one small pleasure and instead must suffer. Head stuffy, joints achey, throat inflamed and tender. Being sick is no fun. 

However, we must not concede the field too quickly. We can marshall our resources. Fortifying lemsip, hot lemonade, saladas, bad yet funny cartoon shows. And of course, the greatest invention since sliced bread, chicken noodle soup.

Deploy the aldi le creuset casserole. Marvel at the economy of everyone’s favourite bargain supermarket, with everyday classics such as Cørn Flarkes and Végëmità, and nine kilogram bags of slightly used parsnips for only $5. 

Into the pan, pour a few litres of freshly reconstituted chicken stock. Slide in as much chicken as you could get defrosted in time for soup making. I used thighs, but drumsticks, wings, and of course the gold standard of a whole chicken would be sehr gut. 

Now raid the pantry for things that would impart deliciousness. Lemongrass—suitably bruised—garlic—smashed into near oblivion—ginger—turned into match sticks—kaffir lime leaves—roughly torn—and the top green parts of a friendly neighbourhood leek. Into the pot these go, joining the chicken and stock.

Apply heat. Heat, as it is often forgotten, is the key to cooking. Bring to a boil, then a simmer, then put a lid on and wait for an hour or so. Maybe less. Maybe more. Look, this isn’t rocket science. It’s chicken soup science, infinitely more useful.

When the liquid is suitably flavourful, remember as a sick chap your usually acute sense of taste is numb, evacuate the chicken into a bowl. Then with the aid of another larger bowl, a strainer, and your Other to assist—a cold makes for weak upper body strength—separate the golden liquid from the detritus. Be not sad, as it has completed its duty. Thanks ingredients, thingredients.

Return the clear liquid to the pot. Hum a dirge while you mash the flavour pottage to extract every last iota of flavour. 

Cube, or shred if the idea of a world without the rule of law is somehow appealing, the chicken. Put aside. Thinly slice a leek. Thinly dice carrots. Retrieve with dignity some frozen corn from the ice chest. Put the vegetables into the soup. Allow to float and gently cook.

When the vegetables are almost soft, put the chicken back in the pot.

For the noodle part of the dish, take a packet of noodles. We used thin hokkein. Slice into appropriate five to eight cm ribbons. Then into the pot with them.

This is a good time to put one’s head over the pot and inhale deeply. When politicians say they never inhaled, they must never have had chicken soup this good.

It is also a good time to add some more flavour. A few tablespoons of soy, shaoxing wine, and perhaps one tablespoon of fish sauce.  

Stir up everything, but with a risotto like lovingness, not a harsh vinaigrette like whisk. 

Ladle generous serves into comforting bowls. Sprinkle with sesame oil and thinly sliced shallots. 

It does a body good. 

I made bircher muesli and so can you

My problem with cereal is the crunch crunch. Mornings should be quiet dignified times, not bite sized moments of carnivale. This is why I traditionally gravitate away from the medically approved bowl of frosted sugar flakes and towards other options, perhaps a lightly toasted piece of bread with hummus and fresh slices of tomato, or yellow clouds of scrambled eggs. 

Every few months I am struck by the urge for bircher muesli. The combination of oats and fruit and yoghurt makes one feel very fortified and transported to an alpine Swiss sanatorium, just like what I remember from the first few pages of Mann’s incredibly boring Magic Mountain.

Messy but delicious. 

The night before—I always feel breakfast recipes that reqire action the night before are a little precious, but bear with it—take an amount of oats. I think 1/4 of a cup is good. Into a mixing bowl add a bit more than 1/8 of a cup of water and the juice of a half a lemon. Stir it all about and then perhaps sprinkle in some more oats or some more water. Put into the fridge and wait staring at the clock until some suitable AM time. 

The next day get it out of the fridge. Grate a green apple, skin too. Put the oats into a eating bowl—although if your self esteem was low you could just eat from the mixing bowl, we’ve all been there—and add the grated apple.

Now add a few spoons of some sort of yoghurt. Most recently I’ve been using creamy greek yoghurt which goes very well indeed.

Oh, in the mean time, possibly during your 12 hour wait, roast some hazelnuts (170 for 7 or so minutes) and then try to remove as much of the skins as possible by rubbing them in a tea towel. Roughly crush a few and them put them on your muesli. 

Now add some more fruit, perhaps some notblue-blueberries. Then do your signature over the top with honey. Now eat, feel very virtuous, and forget all about that greasy burger you ate the night before. Das ist gut!

I made roast broccolini and so can you

Roasting is this culinary magic trick that makes everything taste fantastic. I’d like to try a roast roast chicken, I think that would be amazing.

Take a bunch of a vegetable. In this case broccolini, which is a cross between broccoli and Mussolini. Don’t wash it, but just rub the dirt and bits off. You could wash it but then you have to dry it and who has time? 

Throw on a baking tray, sign your name with oil and add the obligatory salt and pepper. Whack in a fairly hot (220-ish?) oven for 20 minutes, or until the sprout bits are almost too cooked and the stalks are crispy and tender and a little brown. 

Eat all of it. I had it with pasta and a tomato sauce, but it’d be lovely with just a squeeze of lemon. Lemon is another magic trick that makes everything taste a little better. By my logic—unimpeachable as it is—a roast lemon would be something to write home about.  

So good you won’t even know it’s a vegetable.

Inspired by this.

I made sangria and so can you

⁄¡Olé! Firstly, to disappoint you—the best writing trick I know, disappoint the reader as soon as possible—this is about white sangria. This is due to a longstanding dislike for red wine on the part of my co-consumer. 

You’ll need some sort of solid storage container, ideally a jug. It doesn’t have to be venetian crystal, but honestly, life is too short. We used something even better: an old plastic juice bottle. It really brings out the terroir of $8 white wine. 

As alluded to, you’ll need white wine. It should be bad. Well, it shouldn’t be a great wine. I used a semillon sauv-blanc—the redwine disliker also has suspicions on several sort of white varieties. 

Dump it, or pour lovingly, into your jug. Or carafe. Or, ahem, juice bottle. 

Add litre bottle of lemonade. Aren’t bubbles fun? 

Slice a country mile’s worth of citrus. In ours went blood navels, regular oranges, and limes. Thin whole slices are nice, and presumably allow optimal flavour smooshing around, but we had to cut smaller pieces so we can cram them into our bottle. The poetry of cooking: cram, smoother, chop. Lovely. 

Add a few sprigs of mint. Don’t get confused though, this doesn’t signify dessert! 

Because we’re all young and it was a Sunday we add one two three four just kidding only two honestly shots of Bacardi. Shake gently or stir and dump in some ice—or frozen fruit puree/apple juice—before you drink. Pour into long glasses or ikea plastic cups, as above. 

Best drunk while en pique-nique.

I made pavlova and so can you

Pavlova, fluffy and crispy and with insides that tastes like how I imagine clouds would taste like. Of course being the reasonably mature chap that I am, I know clouds would disappoint. Like snow. One always imagines snow as being fluffy essentially temperature neutral powder. Instead it is this cold crunchy stuff. How life disappoints! 

On with the cooking! So, assemble the ingredients listed here. Yes yes, we all hate Donna Hay, but thankfully she is not the recipe. So we can cook it while maintaing our smug dislike of the bronzed ‘food stylist’.

Separate your eggs—you want the whites. You can do that precious from one shell to another shell transferring method, but I like doing it my hands. Egg yolks always remind me of canned apricots. Be careful however, as apparently the slightest trace of yolk etc will DESTROY EVERYTHING AND THEN YOU WILL BE SAD! The mixing bowl should be dry and clean, obvs. 

Now whisk until you have the start of a range of stiff white mountains with an electric mixer or somesort. It’s a bit tricky to know when they’re exactly ready, but they shouldn’t move. You can even hold them upside down above your head and nothing will happen. Now gradually add the sugar, bit by bit and continue to whisk. They should also be fairly glossy, like the coat of Spirit, mighty stallion of the Cimarron (whatever that is.) Stiff, too. An analogy between stiffness and a horse would be in the poorest of taste. 

Now add the cornflour and vinegar and whisk just a tiny bit until everything is combined. Transfer your mountains to an oven tray lined with some baking paper. I really love baking paper. I don’t love the greaseproof paper that we’ve mistakenly been using as baking paper, however. Shape into an 18 centimetre roundish sort of cake like shape.

You can taste the mixture, although doing it before adding the vinegar/cornflour is best. Mmm, sweet eggs. Oh! Get ready to have your world rocked: corn flour isn’t made form corn! It’s just fine regular wheat flour. Truth in labelling, sit on that. 

Bake in the oven for an hour and 20 minutes then leave to cool. It’ll probably turn out pretty good. It’s satisfying, in a way. 

I have a love/hate relationship with passionfruit seeds.

Now! You can either prepare the whole thing with cream and fruit, or cut it into individual slices and add the bits later. Whatever you choose, I recommend whipped cream and raspberries—the lazy berry—and passionfruit. Delicious. And easy. And Australian. There’s nothing like a dessert that is delicious and patriotic. 

I made a fried egg sandwich and so can you

My normal fried egg sandwich consists of egg, bread (duh to both), rooster, some ketchup and a few dashes of worcestershire sauce. As you know, I’m a saucy fellow.

Today I tried something different. The key, regardless of other decision, is a a well fried egg, complete with a lacy skirt and a somewhat cooked yolk. I normally hate well cooked eggs—concrete scrambled eggs and cardboard omelettes—but as a newcomer to the fried egg I need a ‘friendly’ version. 

Instead of the usual array of sauces, I spread a generous coating of hoisin sauce on one layer of toast. Then quite a few thin crispy slices of shallot/green onion. It looked rather pretty, circles of green and white against resinous brownness. Then the egg on top, folded neatly to fit over the bread. As too much change is bad, I was obliged to serve with a squiggle of rooster on top of the egg. And lots of fresh black pepper.

It was delicious. A sort of fried rice sandwich, sans the rice! Well worth trying. I read this recipe somewhere, but can’t figure out where. You pretty much have to eat this with a steaming cup of Moccona. 

I made a reuben sandwich and so can you

Sandwiches are art. There is no other way to describe it. They are the king of food types, the emperor of cuisine choice, the sultan of substantial food. I have estimated that in the past week alone I have eaten at least twenty sandwiches. While a salad or pasta dish is naturally restricted to one or two meal times only, sandwiches are forever. I would be comfortable with a sandwich for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

I refuse to believe the silly story about some fop playing cards inventing the sandwich. Like a predilection towards war and conflict, sandwiches are deeply encoded within the blocks that make up our fundamental characteristics. I imagine if someone really paid attention to the cave drawings in Lascaux, they would surely discovery a paleolithic croque-monsieur.

The sandwich’s main strength is that of variety: a sandwich can take a broad range of forms and can have anything on it. In a very real sense, there are no rules towards construction. Guidelines perhaps, but not unbreakable rules. I submit to you the kebab, pizza, burger, pide, wrap are all sandwiches trading under different names, possibly for beneficial tax reasons. The sandwich is particularly adept at using leftovers. If you have leftovers, put them between something—possibly bread—add some sauce or some other condiment and then eat. If you say you do not like sandwiches I will look at you as if you have said you do not need oxygen or something else. This is not hyperbole, but hyper-truth. Sandwiches, at the end of the day, are life. Does it not say in the bible “You shall not make for yourself anything but a sandwich?” I rest my case.

Having convinced you to accept the premise that sandwiches are great, I now can only offer a suggestion as to a particularly pleasing configuration.

Take one of those supermarket focaccia rolls. They might be hiding in the ‘avoidable 90s baked goods’ section, along with those little snack sponge fingers, filled with ‘cream’ and mini-‘muffins’ and such like. Turkish bread was my backup plan, the way not leaking oil was BP’s backup plan. 

Halve it and then add a few fairly thickish slices of turkey breast. If you make some argument that a reuben must have corned beef, you are right in the same way mass murderers are technically humans. I cannot abide by the fetishism of ‘authenticity’ that exists in the food world. It is small minded and childlike to cry out into the night: “A PIZZA CANNOT HAVE PINEAPPLE ON IT!” Take your argument from authority and go and make a pizza from it, boring person. 

Now add some sauerkraut. Mine came in a giant jar that I imagine will last around nine years, or slightly less. I smooshed it in a strainer to get rid of some of the juice first. A nice layer. Now, the secret ingredient: a minor flood of thousand island dressing. Such a pleasant colour. It looks like progress and feels like a socialist challenge to the bland homogeneity of mayonnaise. Could someone check to see if Marx did indeed invent 1000 isld. dressing? 

A layer of cheese. Jarlsberg would be ace, but I had tasty so that’s what I used. How can you disagree with a cheese named by its chief attribute? Some pepper! No salt or butter. My other’s sister gave us a sandwich press for Christmas, so I used that. You could of course use a fry pan, but in that case put a plate on top and something heavy on it to squish it down, as if you were some sort of industrial squishing machine. 

Cook until done. Slice on the diagonal, obviously. Squirt some more dressing on the plate so you can dip as you go and maybe a pickle or three or four. Oh so lovely. 

*(I took pictures on the middle camera—not my phone or the big camera—but foolishly neglected to put it in tulip mode.)