MEMORIAL SERVICE

There will be a Memorial Service for Donlevy Fitzpatrick on Monday March 3 at the

Sacred Heart Church 87 Grey Street St.Kilda at 11 am.

Donlevy Fitzpatrick

Don died peacefully at his home around 11pm on Thursday 21 February Palm Beach Sydney 2008 .

You brought a sense of occasion to everywhere you went.

your loving mates

George and Diane

Roquette Science

December 2004 Dear Editor.

What do you think about a story, working title Roquette Science
On the molecular gastronomists?

Tracing the trend back to Marinetti who in his futurist manifesto Cucina Futurisimo in fascist Italy as well as attributing the demise of Italian supremacy to the slothful practice of eating pasta, invented dishes like salami dunked in coffee to be eaten while stroking a cat to the soundtrack of Wagner in a room sprayed with perfume? [Sound familiar?]

On a more serious note, how, much of the movement is based on pseudo-scientific assertions like The Fat Duck’s Heston Blumental’s justification that white chocolate goes with caviar because they both contain amines?

Amines of course are found in most organic compounds including meth-amphetamine, L.S.D as well as most other foodstuffs. In fact white chocolate has had most of its amines removed which would mean that caviar, if you follow his assumption would go much better with a big dark chocolate on ice. [I've always liked my Beluga with Valhrona.]

I would like to explain how Adria Ferran fits perfectly into the cultural context of the Spanish surrealists as an extension of Dali and Gaudi while the copyists are trying to dazzle us with science providing yet another way of alienating the diner from the cook.

It has always been important for the top end of the restaurant world to keep the diner at a good distance from the professional kitchen. Although the techniques are readily demonstrated and the doodads to make them available we can feel a little silly cooking a piece of beef for 8 to 24 hours at home but bow to the post-future-molecular masters for $$$$ a pop.

Also how molecular [read chemical] winemaking is considered to be the enemy of good wine and natural winemaking traditions are fiercely protected by master winemakers yet no such consideration is given by the new age cooks. This contradiction is ignored by many commentators, we all need the copy. George Lang once told me in 1989 that “ If Joe Shmo wants to read about a capuccino of snail caviar in a cloud of dry ice, who am I to disappoint him?”

I would like to explain how our palates are being seduced by manufactured concentrated flavours that are so strong and wasteful of valuable resources that food matches and combinations need to become more and more intense to satisfy our neophillic needs
I would also like to explain that all this intense food preparation is also extremely useful to a bottom line because many of the preparations are stable for considerable periods of time, allowing the restaurant to dazzle the diner with intricate presentations to justify exorbitant prices for essentially tiny bits of pre-prepared products.

Or to put it another way?

What’s the matter with the food I’m fixing?
“Can’t you tell that it’s out of style?”
Should I be molecular minded?
“If you don’t then you’re in denial.
Don’t you know about the new fashion money
Don’t need bees to make a new-age of honey”
Fat duck, mind fuck, cook muck, big suck
Still sausage rolls for me.


Photo is of a New-Style Sausage Roll from Studio Sunnybrae circa 2004

My excuse for this rant is that its 42 degrees C, some would say the perfect temperature to cook an egg.

Opportunity Knocks.

There is a vacancy for a young chef at Sunnybrae.
The position is full time and provides an ideal opportunity to spend some time consolidating and building on a serious career in cooking. The applicant will be responsible for preparation and assisting in cooking for the restaurant, being the assistant during cooking classes, picking up supplies and helping in the kitchen garden. The position is full time from Thursdays to Mondays with no evening work and no split shifts. The ideal candidate would live close to or in Geelong as some ingredients are sourced from there. They must have their own transport.
The most important attributes that the candidate can bring to us is enthusiasm coupled with energy, an open mind and a fine developing palate. They will be exposed to all facets of cooking and work with fine seasonal ingredients of an interesting nature. The position is available to an experienced third year apprentice or a young capable chef. Some solid experience in a busy professional kitchen is mandatory. The position is suited to a confidant individual who is excited by the industry. Good wages and conditions allow for a settled private life outside the job. If you know anyone who may fit this description please let them know. The job is available from mid April for a May opening. We are short-listing candidates now.We are an hour from Geelong on a small farm near Birregurra

Cafe Des Artistes

D.F.L Clancy, he of many seasons on the floor at Miettas, di Stasio, Dogs Bar and a decade at Sunnybrae now green-carded in New Jersey asks:
Does the Magic Robot know anything about Zoltan Sepeshy? And of any connection to the café art scene?

Robot replies: Nu? So you think because he’s a Magyar we all know of each other?
Zolli [I think I can call him that now] according to a biography of another Detroit artist Sarkis was known amongst his contemporaries as that “mad Hungarian artist” who eventually became the director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
The local arts scene in Detroit in the 30’s and 40’s was based around the Scarab Club and your painting may indeed be of that revered institution. Or it could also be of the Russian Bear, the Roxy Bar, the Bagel Café or any of another dozen cafes and clubs in Detroit haunted by these émigré artists. But it would probably be the most important if it was of the “Round Table” at Greenfields Cafeteria, the Algonquin of Detroit at the time.

The idea of the Artist’s Café holds a mythology that bears examination.
Every city with a history of artistic endeavour has had its share of bohemian cafes and restaurants that have made an immeasurably important contribution to the spiritual life of that city.
At 144 Little Collins Street Melbourne in the thirties you could possibly have found Tucker, Dargie, Bell and many other established, emerging or struggling Melbourne artists enjoying and possibly trading pictures for good Russian inspired tucker provided by Minka Wolman/Veal in her much loved cafe Petrushka.

Mietta's salon was also a unique moment in time for Melbourne.
Lucio's in Paddington?

There are so many.








The patron of such places has to have a generosity of spirit to nurture artists, who often contribute more to the long term reputations of the restaurants than the fine cooking that may be on offer.
How many of us have taken coffee at Aux Deux Magots just to feel the spirit of de Beauvoir and Satre? Taken a drink at the Closerie de Lilas to feel the Absinthe in Baudelaire’s veins?














But to consciously construct such places is thankfully nearly impossible. They spring out of the essence of hospitality which is what makes this business so rewarding to its owners and its regulars.
Any others that come to mind?

Top Photo of Gerbeaud Budapest by Manfed Hamm
From Coffee Houses of Europe by George Mikes.

A Bowl of Fruit

The end of a lunch for the artist and his muse.
The lunch remains ours but the fruit is fair game.
I spent a couple of days in town this week and could not help but notice the size of the stone-fruit in the markets; they’re breeding them big for the city.
The fruit you see in the bowl are Green-Gage plums and white nectarines. The tree from where the nectarines were picked I found at the Birregurra tip over 20 years ago and was one of the first fruit trees planted here at Sunnybrae. As found it was a gnarled old stump that had been coppiced a couple of times, like a huge Mallee-root with a few sticks still in leaf. After taking an axe to it I chopped it into about six bits and each one has grown and fruited from that day on. I don’t know the variety but its small intensely flavoured with a back palate that’s very pleasantly slightly bitter. Each year we dry the excess and the perfume of the dried fruit is still strong after a year.
The plums on the other hand are from a three year old tree, pure sweetness almost painfully so. Green Gage plums are deceptive. The colour green to our visual palate always suggests sour or un-ripe but in this case green definitely means go.
The liquid they were marinated in is a light sugar syrup with plenty of lemon and a touch of cardamom and vanilla. The hot syrup is poured over the raw fruit and that is enough to lightly soften the already perfect ripeness.



It was to be served with a fresh goat’s cheese panir. But as I warmed the milk added some buttermilk and lemon I immediately realised that there would not be enough curd but kept at it. It tasted a little bland so I added some extra salt and as the heat grew the curds became plastic like a mozzarella. Finally I placed the lightly pressed curd onto a bowl and put the closest weight on top [the melon] to make a small indent on the top.
This was filled with a little chopped shallot, EVO [last years] and some finely cut basil and it found its way into the antipasto.
The Angelinas, Prune d’Agen and Satsumas are next.

The cooking class schedule is on the new Cooking Class blog at the top right of this page.
More later.

Hard Copy

Travel and travel writing is quite an art. What got me started on this thread was an essay by Linda Jaivin. No not the one from Eat Me that could be made into a cheeky new age Safeway ad, but an essay titled Where Travel Stops in Meanjin Leaves Town 2003. Jaivin begins with an observation on the one-upmanship of contemporary travel writing where “One travel writer rides on the single most bone-rattling bus over the single most inhospitable territory known to humankind. The next one comes along and rides the same bus, but hangs off the roof-rack. The third one does the same – with a rifle between her teeth…”
Contemporary food travel writing loves themes like eating live snake heads in a steamy Borneo jungle amongst unexploded landmines using nitro-glycerine for stove fuel, you get the picture.
With our attention focussed Jaivin takes us through some of her more hardcore travel adventures and gently eases us into probably the most frightening travel destination in Australia, a Detention Centre: the Place Where Travel Stops. She waves her velvet glove with a final plea to our writers to remember to record the journeys of those travellers who having fled torture and persecution in their own countries, to arrive, only to be caged and silenced in our own.

Then the mail arrived with my second volume of Edawrd Behr’s wonderful quarterly the Art of Eating that Flavour Addict from Sydney very generously [of soul] signed me up for last year when he realised that the itch was getting a bit out of control. Of course it only added to the scratch which I am sure was part of the plan.
Thank you it worked.
The Art of Eating is one of those now rather rare publications that give authors room to get into a subject without the commercial restraints of the dailies, glossies or some aspects of the web. Link Here http://www.artofeating.com/ . We can remember Andrew Wood’s Divine a journal that launched many of our contemporary food and wine writers.

It has also been a season of travellers passing through Mr. B called over summer he is living proof that those students with the most chutzpah get the rewards. Michael Benyan [I’ll out him here, he’s not shy], is possibly the most successful expatriate Australian restaurateur/hotelier in London in recent years. It has only taken Michael 18 years to become an overnight success in London. He was with Sam and Samantha Clark from virtually the beginning and now with Mark Sainsbury in a very special Hotel/Restaurant called the Zetter in Clerkenwell central London.http://www.thezetter.com/

One of the most exciting aspects of this quirky cool hostelry is that it is built over an ancient aquifer hence the name of the district Clerkenwell. The area was an 18th Century spa and had a number of breweries.

The underground water is fresh, sweet and plentiful and not only serves as drinking water bottled for the restaurant but uses the temperature differential to drive all the air-conditioners in the building, so no ugly water coolers have to placed on the rather picturesque roof. Michael was one the cheekiest, naughtiest and most likeable students I have taught at TAFE. You always knew he would crack it. No small part of his success I am sure is attributable to his ability to play cricket. If you think the Ashes are competitive, there was/is a game between Nick Smallwood's Hospitality Eleven and Chris Jagger’s Allsorts that meant if you could wield a bat or spin a ball, it assured you a place in the best hospitality houses in London. Michael has translated his Australian/Melbourne hospitality sensibilities to conquer one of the most difficult markets in the world. They’re planning the next Zetter now.
My apologies to those that missed out on booking for the Itch but soon on Sundays