Happy New Year

Making plans for New Year's Eve a couple of weeks ago I decided that what I really wanted to do this year was absolutely nothing at all.

New Year's Eve has never been my favourite night to go out - there's always so much expectation and pressure to have an "amazing" time - but in the past I've always allowed myself to be swept up in someone else's idea of what constitutes a perfect New Year's Eve. Some have been better and/or memorable than others - seeing out the old millenium with three generations of my family at a close friend's apartment overlooking Sydney harbour; dragon dancers, bad pop music and Vietnamese beers in a pavement bar in Ho Chi Minh City; a picnic for two under the stars at Martindale Hall in South Australia's Clare Valley - but most have been just ho hum.

This year I'm doing what I want to do: staying home with a bottle of Vintage Chandon, a lovely piece of Barramundi and a good book. I have a small sliver of city skyline view from my balcony so I'm fairly sure I'll see a firework or two, and if I can't, well, I'm sure they'll be on TV. Other pluses include no jostling crowds, queues to use the bathroom or tiresome hunt for a taxi at the end of the night.

Boring? Obviously I don't think so but the reactions I've received from people I've shared my plan with have been interesting, ranging from "that's just wierd" to "I'm so jealous, I wish I could stay home".  I guess, in the end, it's just a personal thing.

However you decide to spend your New Year's Eve, I hope you have a happy and safe night and a wonderful 2010. I shall look forward to catching up with you again next year!

Cake is not bread

A friend finally put a name to something at lunch yesterday which I've privately had a giggle about many times in the past: "The Great Australian Banana Bread Conspiracy", ie. that by calling this sweet and delicious breakfast favourite "bread" it somehow makes it less than cake. It also makes it Ok to whack it in the toaster and spread butter all over it. Can you imagine doing that with chocolate or orange almond cake?

Having made banana bread many times over the years (it's a great way for using up ripe bananas and a popular choice for office morning teas) I can testify there's nothing bread-like about banana bread except that it's cooked in a loaf tin. Oh, and for the record, sorry, but muffins are also cake.

I'm most definitely not saying don't eat banana bread but I am saying let's be honest and call a cake a cake!

Ho, Ho, Ho

Just a quick note to say Merry Christmas before I head off to my sister's for presents and champagne, paper hats and turkey, pavlova and good cheer. I hope your day is as fun- and food-filled as ours will be, and that Santa makes all your Christmas wishes come true. Take care.

Ylla x

Make the most of Christmas leftovers

Having just returned from doing a pre-Christmas grocery shop at Coles I am left wondering just how big the average Australian Christmas get-together is. If the groaning shopping trollies, piled high with fresh produce, meat and seafood, soft drinks and mixers, Christmas cakes and chockies, and deli goods of all descriptions, are anything to go by, most people out there are obviously expecting to have to feed literally dozens of people between now and when the shops reopen after Christmas. (Umm, isn’t that Boxing Day?)

Or is it that our collective eyes (I’ll include myself in this because I did come home with a few treats I wouldn’t normally buy, “just in case” friends drop in) are bigger than our festive bellies? No one wants to be seen to be to be less than generous but is such overabundance really necessary?

According to action group Do Something, Australians will spend about $7.9 billion on food in December, with about 20% of it destined for the bin. While food waste is a problem all year round (see my post from October 20, Waste Not, Want Not to read more) a poll commissioned by the group found that 60% of Aussies admitted they waste more food than usual at Christmas. Not only is it a terrible waste of money, it’s a waste of the resources that went in to producing the food, and it’s bad for the environment (rotting food in landfill is a major source of the greenhouse gas methane).

This year, Do Something has launched the first ever National Leftovers Day on Boxing Day, which aims to raise awareness of food waste, help people save money and help the environment. As part of the campaign, Australians will be asked to be conscious of leftovers and to freeze them or turn them into additional meals, rather than throw them away. The organisation’s Food Waste website  has tips on proper storage as well as lots of recipe ideas for festive favourites such as ham, turkey, smoked salmon and Christmas pud.

Personally I can never go past a Turkey sandwich on Boxing Day. Mmmm...

A project for 2010

It's probably not a terribly cool thing to admit but I like lists - shopping lists, to-do lists, things to pack lists, pros versus cons lists. Writing them makes me feel organised; crossing things off makes me feel productive.

I also enjoy other people's lists - the most scandalous news stories of the decade, for example, or the biggest grossing movies of all time - so of course I clicked on a blog post over the weekend which promised me the five best books that the blogger had read this year. It turned out that the writer had set out to write a post on her favourite book but couldn't narrow it down to just one, hence the list.

I can't recall which books were listed now but it started me thinking about the books I'd put in my top five for 2009. A S Byatt's The Children's Book perhaps. Sarah Water's The Little Stranger? Maybe. Definitely We need to talk about Kevin. Or did I read that in 2008? Ummm, what else? Pondering the question it soon became apparent that I can't even remember half the books I've read this year, let alone pick five. In my defence I've probably read somewhere between 120-150 books over the last 12 months, and the fact that I've forgotten many of them suggests they probably weren't very good.

I am curious though so I've decided that I'm going to start keeping a list of the books I read so that at the end of 2010 I'll be able to look back at my year's reading as a whole. I'm not sure what it'll reveal about my reading habits, other than I'll read anything that takes my fancy, but I think it'll be interesting.

Backdating the list to Saturday, when I came up with the idea, here is the list so far:

Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
Book four in the Twilight series. Did I mention that my childhood ambition was to be a vampire when I grew up?

This is How by MJ Hyland
A sympathetic and compelling portrait of a murderer before, during and after his crime. I loved this book and plan to track down Hyland's previous book Carry me Down on the basis of it.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
I'm less than a third of the way through this family saga set in post colonial Africa but I'm finding it hard to put down. The narrative device of having the five females in the family tell the story from their unique perspectives while the evangelical preacher father is effectively silenced is interesting.



(On the subject of lists, I recently read a quote online which said something along the lines of "Put 'eat chocolate' on the top of your to-do list, so that you'll get at least one thing done today." Love it!)

I scream, you scream, everybody wants ice cream

Confession time: I've been thinking about ice cream a lot lately. And gelato. And sorbet. Mmmm... In my defence I was writing a story on the history of ice cream for this month's Open House magazine, but I'm not sure that explains my frequent detours past the freezer cabinet in the supermarket! And don't even get me started on the delights of Glace on Marion Street, Leichhardt...

The story is below, if you're interested. While you're reading it, I'll just be up the road buying a tub of Maggie Beer's Lemon & Orange Curd Ice Cream...

Origins of ... ice cream

With temperatures soaring and the holiday season upon us, it’s no surprise that sales of ice-cream, gelato and sorbet increase over summer. Australians are amongst the biggest per capita consumers of ice cream, eating 18 litres each every year, in cones and cups, made into parfaits, sundaes and desserts such as Bombe Alaska and as an accompaniment for other desserts.

There are many unsubstantiated legends surrounding the history of ice cream. One commonly repeated tale is that Marco Polo introduced ice cream to Italy in the 13th Century after visiting China. Another has the Italian Duchess Catherine de Medici introducing sorbet to the French court in 1533 when she married the Duc d’Orleans, later to become King Henry II. One hundred years later, Charles I of England is said to have offered his French chef a pension of £500 a year if he kept the recipe of “frozen snow” a secret, ensuring that it would only be served at the Royal table.

What is certain is that Chinese invented sorbet and a type of ice cream made from milk and rice as long ago as 3000 BC, coming up with a method of immersing containers filled with a syrupy mixture in a mixture of ice and salt to lower the temperature of the mixture below freezing point. Insulated underground chambers called ice houses were used to conserve ice throughout the summer months.

From China it is likely that the technique spread to Ancient Persia and the Arab world and then North into Europe. Records show that the Roman Emperor Nero enjoyed iced confections made from snow flavoured with fruit and honey.

Ice cream made from milk was first recorded in Europe in Italy and then France in the 17th century. The first published English recipe was in Mrs Mary Eales Receipts in 1718. Early ice creams were simply flavoured and sweetened cream that was frozen but recipes soon became more sophisticated and the technique of periodic stirring to prevent the formation of ice crystals and improve the texture became common.

As ice cream manufacture depended on a supply of ice, it was a rare and expensive treat enjoyed only by Europe’s aristocracy until the 19th Century when the commercial harvesting of ice took off. With large quantities of ice available it became possible for coffee shops and street vendors to sell inexpensive serves of ice cream to ordinary people. Italy continued to lead the world in ice cream making and Italian emigrants helped spread the word. Popular flavours of the period included vanilla, peach, raspberry, apricot and lemon.

In 1843, American Nancy Johnson invented a hand-cranked ice cream freezer, which simplified the process of making ice cream but it wasn’t until cheap refrigeration became common in the 20th Century that ice cream really came into its own.

In Australia, both ice cream and Italian-style gelato are common. The main differences are that gelato has a lower fat content than ice cream (around 4-8% compared to 16-26%), has a denser, creamier texture, and is served at warmer temperature so it can be more easily molded than ice cream. Sorbets on the other hand are made from fresh fruit, water and sugar and contain no dairy. While vanilla is the most widely consumed flavour, it is possible to make ice cream, gelato and sorbets from ingredients as diverse as earl grey tea, whiskey, avocado, wasabi and beetroot with balsamic vinegar. Three Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal once famously served Bacon & Egg ice cream, proving imagination is the only limit.

Should we worry about food miles?

As the world meets in Copenhagen this week for the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference, it was interesting to read that government economic research agency the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) is refuting the widely-held belief that buying locally produced food is always better for the environment and labelling “food miles” a “misleading indicator” of carbon emissions.

The term food miles refers to the idea that food that travels long distances leaves a bigger carbon footprint than locally-produced food, thanks to the fossil fuels required to transport it.

In fact, researchers have found that the carbon footprint of an imported product may still be less than the local equivalent if it is produced more efficiently overseas. The ABARE report reads:

Empirical evidence indicates that food miles is an unreliable indicator of carbon emissions in the food supply chain. For example, in 2006 a major study on the validity of food miles found that New Zealand is substantially more energy efficient, and less carbon intensive, than UK producers in producing and delivering lamb and dairy products to the UK market.

The problem is the fact that the distance food travels is only one factor contributing to its carbon footprint: energy used in the production process, for example to power machinery or heat greenhouses, and fertiliser and pesticide use all play a role. In the example cited in the report, greener farming practices meant that New Zealand produced four times less carbon dioxide delivering lamb and dairy products to UK markets than their British peers, even when the more than 17,000km journey was factored in.

Here in Australia we are, like New Zealand, comparatively “clean and green” but thanks to the country’s sheer size, food often travels vast distances before it reaches its destination.

One grassroots movement that has been gaining in popularity is the “100-mile diet”, so-called because proponents only eat food that is grown within a 100 mile (160km) radius of their home. Good in theory until you consider that staples like sugar, coffee, tea and even milk would be off the menu for most of the population.

In the end food miles is probably one of those concepts to be aware of without being slavishly obsessive about. There are plenty of other good reasons though to eat locally-grown, seasonal produce whenever possible, not least because it usually tastes better and you’ll be supporting regional producers.

Streamline website goes live

One of the best things about blogging is that there's no lag between writing a post and it appearing online. For most other media platforms, old and new, there's a delay between submitting your copy and seeing it published - anywhere between several days to several weeks or months. A story I finish this week for example, might not appear until the March issue of a monthly magazine, which will go on-sale in mid-February. When you're really keen to see - and show off - the finished product, long lead times can be very frustrating!

Which is way I was so happy to get confirmation that the business sustainability website I was writing the copy for back in October has finally gone live. Sustainability, especially as it relates to food production, is a topic dear to my heart and I was pleased to do my bit to get Streamline's website up and running.

In brief, Streamline is a initiative by the Auburn and Parramatta City Councils to provide businesses within the Duck River Catchment area with the resources they need to adopt sustainable business practices, reducing their impact on the environment, increasing efficiency and improving their bottom line. Hopefully it'll be a great success.

A perfect partnership

It doesn't take much to make me happy - a good book, a glass of wine - so I was pleased to see on the weekend that Berkelouw has combined the two, opening a wine bar upstairs in the previously underutilised lounge area upstairs in their Leichhardt store. Furnished with a selection of plush sofas and wall to wall bookcases filled with secondhand and rare books, the bar ticks my boxes for an enjoyable venue - comfy seating, ambient noise levels low enough to have a conversation over, a decent wine list and a menu of interesting nibbles to stave off hunger pangs until dinner.

Owners Colin Cappelleri and Gary Mullins apparently aim to showcase boutique and regional wineries and local produce, with the focus on the Orange region for Summer.

Anyone care to join me?

If not, that's OK, I'll just take my book along.

Masterchef Series 2 comes to town

Despite its reputation as the heart of Sydney’s Italian community, Leichhardt is sadly lacking in decent Italian restaurants. In the last year or so I’ve tried quite a few of the Norton St offerings and a few on Marion St and for the most part they range from disappointing to downright terrible. One of the few exceptions is Caffe Moretti, which does fabulous, authentic pizzas (this is not the place to come if you want a pizza supreme or, heaven forbid, Tandoori chicken) and great pasta, seafood and meat dishes for those who can resist the siren call of the thin 'n' crispy bases. 

It was to Moretti that my friend Alex and I headed last night after catching a movie. Clutching a bottle of red we arrived to discover the usually moderately lit restaurant blazing with lights and a film crew shooting footage of the restaurant’s diners and staff. Not particularly interested in cashing in our 15 minutes of fame just yet, Alex and I decided to take a punt on the next pizzeria along. Wandering a little further up the road to Carpaccio we were met with the sight of another film crew, trailing cables between the tables and capturing all the action of the floorstaff racing around.

"What's going on?", we asked. "And why does that guy in the jacket look so familiar? Doesn’t that other one look a bit like George Colombaris from...?"

Ohhhh, Ok...

Yep, we’d stumbled across the cast and crew of the second series of Masterchef filming an episode for the upcoming new series. Settling into a table at yet another pizzeria with a front row view of all the action, Alex and I watched as contestants in blue aprons with the Masterchef logo on them (the red team was back at Caffe Moretti) served up meals at a trot to the packed tables and George, Gary and Matt posed for photos with simpering female admirers (one blonde lassy in a microscopic orange frock was particularly persistant).

As entertainment goes it was better than the movie we’d just sat through but I have to say not quite good enough to make up for the absolutely dreadful pizza and laughably bad service we ended up enduring. Oh well, can’t have everything...

Price busted

If you’ve ever thought that Coles and Woolies are virtual clones, at least when it comes to prices, you’re right. Consumer group Choice recently sent undercover shoppers to 145 supermarkets around the nation, including Coles, Woolworths/Safeway, Aldi, IGA and FoodWorks to buy an average basket of groceries, consisting of 35 common items, including bread, bananas and rice.

The results showed that nationally, the price difference between Coles ($127.67) and Woolworths ($126.87) was less than a dollar. The same basket of Aldi home brand products cost 25% less ($94.30), while IGA ($142.68) and FoodWorks ($154.73) were most expensive.

If home brand products aren’t your thing or there isn’t an Aldi in your area, consider buying fruit, vegies, meat and other goodies from independent providores – they may or may not be cheaper but at least you’ll be supporting local businesses and taking a stand against the big guys who’d like to see them shut up shop for good.

Letter to Mr Santa Claus, c/o The North Pole

Dear Santa,

Since I hear you’re making a list and checking it twice, I thought I’d drop you a line with a few suggestions for my Christmas stocking this year. Now I know you’ve got a thing about people being nice so I’ve been trying not to cry or pout and I’ve barely been naughty at all recently. Really. Well, Ok then, define naughty. I mean you’re not going to hold the chocolate and the champagne against me are you...? Are you?

I admit I haven’t always been sleeping when I should but honestly, it’s not my fault – there are just so many fantastic restaurants and bars to try, and well, I get a little excited, and then before you know it, it’s past my bedtime...

Anyway, well, if you do see the way clear to giving me a little something this year here are some ideas. You don’t even have to wrap them.


• More kitchen bench space - about 2m would do

• Red Kitchenaid StandMixer

• Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Companion

• Toasted sandwich maker

• A shower with two showerheads

• New, less nosy and intrusive neighbours

• More privacy on my balcony to shield me from existing, nosy and intrusive neighbours

• Return ticket to Paris via Barcelona and London

• Bottle of Pedro Ximinez sherry

• An espresso machine

• A hitherto undiscovered Great, Great Aunt with a large fortune, a dodgy ticker and no other relatives


Thanks Santa, you rock!

Love,
Ylla x

(PS: has anyone ever told you that red is really your colour?)

One for the reading list

Last month I was lucky enough to be given free tickets to see An Education, a lovely little film about a bright but disaffected 16-year-old girl who is seduced by a much older man in London in the early 1960s. When I fronted up for the screening I hadn't heard anything much about the movie except that the screenplay had been written by Nick Hornby (whose Polysyllabic Spree is a must-read for anyone interested in the process of reading) but I was utterly delighted by ever moment of it. Carey Mulligan as Jenny, the heroine, was a revelation; Peter Saarsgard was slimily attractive as her con-man boyfriend; the script was amusingly wry and finely crafted, and the clothing and set direction were superbly evocative of the years immediately before the '60s really started to swing.

Several weeks after seeing the movie I won a copy of the book of An Education (fate obviously really, really wanted me to be aware of this story) in a competition run by Penguin books. As I'd recently seen the film (and also it came with one of those "Now a major film" covers which I feel cheapen a book) I popped it on my things to read pile and forgot about it until this week when I was looking for something to read on the bus (key requirement: must be skinny enough to fit in my handbag).

I'm not sure now if I was consciously aware that the movie was based on a true story - I don't think so - but it turns out to be thinly fictionalised account of British journalist Lynne Barber's personal "coming of age". As such I expected the book to be a detailed account of the affair she found herself caught up in as a impressionable 16-year-old. In fact, the affair is dealt with briefly in chapter two and the bulk of the book is concerned with how that incident coloured the rest of her life, especially her relationships with men and her instinctive distrust of other people. I found it fascinating, not least because Lynne got her break in journalism at Penthouse magazine and briefly had a career as a "sexpert", writing instructional books on how to "improve your man in bed" and enjoy sex as a "single girl" in the '70s. The book is so much more than the movie and I am so pleased to have read it, when the temptation was to think "I already know that story. Why bother?"

In the past there have been occasions when I've seen a movie and been so thrilled by it that I've immediately rushed out and bought the book; others where I've seen the movie adaptation of a favourite novel and loved it just as much as the book. Most often though if you particularly love a book or movie, revisting the story in it's alternate format is disappointing - simple love stories become convulted, confusing and overly wordy in text; exquisitely written tales of yearning and loss become two-dimensional and farcical on screen. If you loved reading AS Byatt's Possession or Isabelle Allende's House of Spirits for example, don't bother seeing the movie versions...

In the case of An Education however, it's one of those rare cases where seeing the movie and reading the book is the ideal, as they both have so much to offer, on so many levels. If you're at a loose end this weekend, I would heartily recommend either or both.

Wake up and hear the clucking

As a food writer, I’ve always loved getting out into rural areas and talking to primary producers about what they do. Dedicated, down-to-earth, hard-working, modest and resilient in the face of drought and the worst kind of money woes, farmers are amongst the best kind of people. I’ve also always felt that there was a real need to remind urban dwellers of exactly where their food was coming from and the hard work that goes into getting it onto supermarket shelves, neatly wrapped in plastic. Most Aussies are sadly divorced from the realities of food production, especially children, who might have only seen a chicken or veggie patch on TV, and think that milk “comes from” bottles.

The good news here in Sydney is that plans are afoot to turn one of the inner city’s parks into a fully functioning farm, complete with fruit and nut orchards, vegetable gardens, farm animals and communal composting facilities. The idea, being floated by Sydney City Council, is that this new city-farm will be a place where people can see and learn about food production first hand. Harold Park, The Crescent Lands in Glebe and Sydney Park in St Peters are all under discussion as potential sites for the new farm. If it's sucessful, a second farm may be considered.

Let's hope it is.

Practical but boring

I realised a little while ago when I was pulling a shepherd’s pie (yes, I know it’s the first day of summer but seriously, could today have been any less summery?) out of the oven that I need new oven mitts. Now, I don’t know about you but in the universal scale of sexy things to spend money on, oven mitts rate about, hmmm, let me see, minus 10? Oven mitts may be practical and necessary but sexy? Uh-huh. My current one is part of a pair I acquired (I must have bought them but not surprisingly, I can’t remember the purchase) maybe 10 years ago and has several gaping holes burnt into it. Its partner went to kitchen linen heaven long ago.

I suppose that in the next few days or weeks I shall be forced to buy another oven mitt but I’m already resenting the cash. I mean, I could be putting that $9 or $15 (Or however much oven mitts cost. Who knows?) towards a dinner at Quay or a bottle of Pedro Ximinez sherry or a fortnight in Paris...

It’s not just oven mitts I dislike spending my hard earned dollars and cents on. There are lots of other things I find completely unworthy. Some that spring to mind are pens (I’ve lost so many over the years, surely the universe owes me some back?), batteries, tampons, sunscreen, dental floss and cleaning products of all kinds. Sure, they’re necessary but talk about boring! In a perfect world these things would automatically arrive once a month/year/decade in a government sponsored delivery you could simply tuck away in a cupboard until needed. Oh well...