PEACHY KEEN

A perfect flavour, that’s what all cooks are looking for. But modern food production is indeed a hungry beast with an insatiable appetite for raw materials. Flavours are big business. As we sit down to Christmas dinner to try to understand even the simplest meal requires a grasp of many disciplines. This year’s food issue of the New Yorker contains an exciting essay on flavour called the Taste Makers by Raffi Khatchadourian. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/23/091123fa_fact_khatchadourian
I recommend spending the few dollars needed to download it if you haven’t seen it yet. Our tweetened web attention spans rarely give us research and writing like this.
Raffi takes us on a trip into the world of the taste makers, the corporations and scientists that dictate the way we taste and how we will taste in the future.
Rory our new apprentice joined us a couple of months ago and constantly reminds me how important learning to taste is to the cook.
As we introduce new flavours to this young man, [who was born in the same year as we opened Sunnybrae, now thats scary] I am very pleased to see that he has an open palate. He is willing to try everything, leaving cultural prejudice behind, while absorbing tastes he has never tried before with enthusiasm and joy. But he has a secret pleasure Red Bull. Raffi, in the New Yorker story casts a light on just how that particular flavour was created as he explains how Deitrich Mateschitz the co-founder of Red Bull went out of his way to create a deliberately unbalanced flavour that would signify the oomph that these rather dubious energy drinks are selling and how every energy drink after that had to now also contain these unbalanced notes that subversibly signify energy .
When Rory first tasted Morello Cherries he said that they tasted like Doctor Pepper.
Now, the scary thing about the New Yorker story to me, is how these flavour scientists now also relate new natural flavours while tasting rare exotic fruit [from the world’s largest heritage citrus orchard in California] to branded products like Snapple. So the dialogue has come full circle. But the Doctor Pepper taste that Rory loves is of course also found naturally in Morello Cherries [benzaldahyde] and also in the pips of the white peaches that we picked today. To understand the flavour compounds that make up this simple wonder of nature that is a ripe white peach is one thing, but to taste the ripe fruit warmed by the sun is to be alive.

Happy whatever you want to call it....

In response another link  from Ms Bliss
For more on the taste trekkers in Vietnam go to http://jamesoseland.com/writings/the-taste-makers

ITS TOO DARN HOT

I was going to tell you about a book that has eluded me for many years until yesterday when I stumbled upon i t in Clunes. Its called Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons, http://www.culinate.com/books/book_excerpts/Stalking+the+Wild+Asparagus one of the early 20th century forager-writer-cooks. Way before the word locavore entered our culinary lexicon Euell was out there picking, cooking and extolling the virtues of “weeds” such as Calamus, Scarlet Sumac and many more including one of my favourites Purslane.

Then I thought I better alert you to the inferior form of Purslane being sold commercially by the recherché providores and show you the preferred culinary form that we love to see self-seeded each year in our garden.

But while taking the photos of the different forms of purslane it occurred to me that while we were getting into the succulents, I had better describe Aptenia    possibly the most common but not as yet trendy succulent that many of you will already have in your gardens.

 Aptenia is all over the garden and as I was stalking it with the camera I noticed that the nasturtiums were making seeds and I had better remind you of the succulent seed pods Nasturtiums make. When young and moist they are such a treat in salads. But no sooner had I clicked a couple of these I realised that I had never written about the plant they were growing under, the Jostaberries, those little but abundant thornless gooseberry blackcurrant crosses that were just ripening, and to tell you how easy they are to grow. But as soon as I had I taken my eye off these I noticed that the black nightshades needed pulling out, or did they instead need picking? Deadly nightshade? Or Black nightshade? Wonderberry? or Blunderberry? But if I started on this I would have to remind you of Luther Burbank http://www.scribd.com/doc/938177/Deadly-Nightshades-PDF and how he was nearly undone by these nightshades. While on the solanaceae I realised that I had posted on Tomatillos and Cape Gooseberries before, but I had forgotten to water or write about the ground cherries, that other Physalis, possibly the finest one of all. Then the hose started to get a life of its own and dragged me to the Lime and Lemon Verbenas that also desperately needed to be watered and then they started to complain that they too have never had their own entry here. But neither had the Drip Still described by Euell in Stalking the Wild Asparagus that lets you distil the essence of such elusive aromas as the Verbenas with simple pots and bowls that are found in every domestic kitchen. But I cant tell you about that either because it’s too darn hot........

Menu For Hope

What is Menu for Hope?
Menu for Hope is an annual fundraising campaign hosted by Pim of Chez Pim and a revolving group of food bloggers around the world. Five years ago, the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia inspired Pim to find a way to help, and the very first Menu for Hope was born. The campaign has since become a yearly affair. For the past three years, Menu for Hope raised nearly a quarter of million dollars in support of the good work of the UN World Food Programme, helping to feed hungry people worldwide.

Each December, food bloggers from all over the world join the campaign by offering a delectable array of food-related prizes for the Menu for Hope raffle. Anyone – and that means you too - can buy raffle tickets to bid on these prizes. For every $10 donated, you earn one virtual raffle ticket to bid on a prize of their choice. At the end of the two-week campaign, the raffle tickets are drawn and the results announced on Chez Pim.

  This year Sunnybrae is offering a prize of a cooking class for 4 people [value $400]  on any Monday as available after February 2010 when our new classes begin.

Ed Charles from tomatom.com is hosting this regions prizes. You can make a bid after December 14 at

Our prize code is AP03. For more details see here : http://www.tomatom.com/

Sippets

Sippet

[Cookery] a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy.

[used as a diminutive of sop]

From the exhibition of the year.
Is John Brack our most inspired artist?

Seen in Victoria St Brunswick. How one grapevine became a vineyard and ate the carport.

The perfect Xmas present for a budding little Heston Jnr.

Would you ask for this to be heated up in a restaurant?

The joy of sharing a plate

but.....

At Christmas lunch remember to save some room for desert.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Like this raspberry tart.
 Classic lemon Tart as per Roux Brothers but add an elegant sufficiency [where are you Stephanie?] of ripe raspberries.....

PS the brothers Roux forgot to tell us to warm the filling before adding to the hot blind baked tart shell. This stops the filling from separting into two layers while cooking.