Kitchen Alchemy

When I was a kid I ate a lot of eggs. Both my mother and my father served them up to me in all manner of ways – soft boiled, as omelettes, and scrambled. I think my favourite might have been soft boiled, but only because Mum also made me very excellent toast soldiers slathered in butter to dip into the runny egg yolk. Yuk! I would never eat such a thing now. I had a bad run in with eggs in the late seventies, thanks to my Mum taking up a job as an egg collector on a Steggles Chicken farm. That job knocked two stone off my mother’s figure in a matter of weeks! It was totally hard yakka – dirty, hot and the chickens, especially the roosters, were not friendly in the slightest. Mum came home one time with a massive gouge down the side of her face – a rooster had gone for her and sliced her cheek open with one of its claws. She didn’t need stitches, thank God, but the attacker left his mark. Even after all these years, there’s still a feint line across Mum’s cheek. Mum used to...

When I was a kid we lived in a part of Newcastle that backed onto a massive expanse of paddocks and swamp. Our neighbours kept horses and cows in those paddocks, so we were lucky enough to grow up and a bona fide built up area with more than a little bit of country sensibility included. Despite this, and contrary to the desires of so many little girls, I did not spend my childhood pestering my parents for a pony. More over, I never even asked any of my neighbours if I might ride one of their horses. They were for looking at and feeding. Nothing else. One horse in particular, Boomerang, seemed to me to distinctly be the kind of horse one should never ride. My mother, my sister and I squeezed through the gate in the back fence one afternoon with the intention of feeding Boomerang and a couple of the other horses some apples that had gone soft. Unfortunately for us, Boomerang spotted the apples in our hands and came galloping towards us at a rate of knots. When we realised he wo...

For some strange reason, my parents never christened my sister or me when we were babies. Christenings aren’t that popular any more – people simply hold a naming day. But back in the sixties, Christianity was still in, so it was the norm to have a baby Christened. My sister was Christened when she was eleven years old – mainly so she could be confirmed a few weeks later with all her sixth grade classmates. As it turned out, I was also Christened when I was eleven – not because my parents were trying to establish some whacky kind of tradition. It was more about convenience. My cousin was being Christened – she was six months old at the time. I remember standing at the front door one night, farewelling my Aunty Kathy and my uncle Yuri. They were telling Dad about their plans to have Tashi Christened at the Wayside Chapel, by the Reverend Ted Knoffs, who’d Christened Tashi’s older brother three years previously. “We’ll get Pet done at the same time!” my dad declared! He and Mum w...

As a child my first encounter with sugar came when my dad slipped a chocolate under both my sister’s and my pillows while we were asleep. I woke up and found the chocolate and ate it immediately. My sister was still asleep at that point, so I got out of bed, retrieved her chocolate, and ate that too. This early acquired obsession led me to an exploration of sugary after school delights, in the absence of my parents of course! My favourite, for sheer ease of access, was the chocolate sprinkles jar. Step one: remove lid. Step two: pour contents into mouth. Repeat until satiated. I tried this one on my little brother recently. Since I’m a grown up and he’s not, I think he was shocked by my childish behaviour! Another favourite after school snack was Milo mud. You get a glass, half fill it with Milo, drip some fresh milk into and mix it until it forms a thick, pasty mud. Then you eat it with a spoon. I also liked making sherbet – only I didn’t bother with the excessive sift...

An anonymous reader left a message saying they'd over cooked their fruit cake, so I thought I'd add some more on this topic. Firstly, I want to say that where cooking is concerned, let your intuition be your guide. Begin with the aroma of the thing you're cooking - in this instance, the fruit cake. Your cake will release its aroma as it begins to reach completion. That's the time to start checking on its progress! 1. Check the surface of the cake. Is it shiny? Is it sticky? These indicate it's not yet cooked. 2. Pierce the centre with a skewer, pushing all the way to the bottom of the tin. Draw the skewer out and check for raw cake mix. If the skewer is clean, the cake is cooked. 3. Is time up? I've found all my fruit cakes require the full cooking time. I then give them an extra 15 minutes, just to be sure. 4. Is the aroma making you want to get out a Christmas tree and decorate it? Do you feel like bursting out into song? Namely, Christmas carols? If ...

I’ve mentioned my first cat, Bill, and I’ve mentioned my current furry friend, Derek, but I think I have completely overlooked Angus, the gorgeous ginger manx who came to live with us when I was seventeen years old. Angus came to us via Vesna, a girl at school who lived on a farm out near Ludenham. She spread the word at school that she was giving away kittens, and I thought my sister, who had just moved in with her boyfriend, was in desperate need of a little kitty kat. It took some time for Angus to be handed over – he was the last of the litter, and the runt to boot. His mother kept taking him off and hiding him in the paddock because she didn’t want to lose her last baby. Never the less, Vesna arrived at school one day with Angus in a box. He hadn’t been weaned yet, so I had to take him to Mrs Knoffs, an art teacher and a well known animal lover, who helped me show Angus how to drink milk from a saucer. He was a sweet little ginger and white angel who attended French class (he...

There have been some excellent animals that have transitted in and out of my life since I was three years old. Scrunch the Sydney Silky, Bill the black cat, and Angus the ginger manx. And for the last almost nine years there's been Derek Dog, a mad mini-foxy who isn't very mini at all and to my knowledge, isn't really aware that he's a dog at all. Derek carrived at a time when I really needed a friend. He was so insane as a puppy, he was an extremely good diversion from the woes that characterised that period of my life. He ate anything - my Converse One Stars, my best black lace bra, even the stone feet on my magazine rack! In fact, he was so crazy, I'm not even sure I really liked him until he'd clocked up his second birthday. But these days, Derek actually astounds me with his complexity of character. He is very cleary an individual with his own agenda and his own preferences. His daily antics never fail to infuriate and amuse me all at the same time....

In my family there is no greater tradition than the Christmas Cake. Unless of course we're talking about Christmas Pudding! As a little kid, I had absolutely no interest in either of these fruit-laden, booze laced Christmas staples. Their flavour was far too complex and mature for me to appreciate. It wasn't until well into my twenties that I started to take an interest in the fruit cake and puddings my mother makes. She and her sisters had obviously learned the art of Christmas cookery from my Nana, who cooked a wicked fruitcake in her heyday, if I do say so myself. But my interest in Christmas cookery always lay with the sweeter delicacies we liked to enjoy on the day - rum balls, coconut ice, mixed spice biscuits. I appointed myself at a very early age to cook the Christmas fancies, and took great delight in seeing my family devour them and grow fat as a result! A couple of years back, my dad suddenly passed away. When Christmas came round that year, my mother arrived...

I can't say I ever remember having pizza as a kid growing up in Newcastle - other than the horrid frozen abominations McCain's stocked in the freezer section of our local supermarket. Imagine my delight, then, when we moved to Penrith and discovered the full flavoured authentic Italian pizza served at Capitano's on the High Street. In fact, there were two pizzerias on the High Street - Capitano's and Renee's. My dad was attracted to Capitano's because it was more of a sit down affair than Renee's - if you dined in at Renee's you invariably had to sit in full view of the passing traffic (the seats were in the window), whereas Capitano's had a proper shopfront with tables and chairs set up well away from the window. Capitano's became a regular occurrence in our new lives in Penrith. We went grocery shopping every second Thursday, and always began the evening with a meal, either at Capitano's, or at a little burger cafe in the Medibank Arcad...

Tea. It's something that we very much take for granted these days. When we want one, we just put the kettle on, whack a tea bag into a cup, pour boiling water over the bag, jiggle it a bit and voila - a good ole' cuppa! But that's not the kind of tea we drank when I was a kid. We had a tea pot, a tin of tea leaves and a well weathered strainer. Tea bags were non-existent in my house! My parents loved a well brewed cup of tea. They also liked a good sleep in. So when I was about eight years old, I appointed myself the official maker of Breakfast In Bed. The menu was simple: toast and tea. Toast was easy enough, but the first time I made a pot of tea to go with it, I was mortified by my father's reaction. "Cat's pee!" he exclaimed after one little sip. This of course would be enough to crumble the enthusiams of most kids, but not me! The following Sunday I set about working on my tea making technique - with a little bit of coaching from Mum,...

I have very strong memories of our visits to Jimmy's Fruit Shop in the small town where I lived as a kid. Beresfield was about thirty minutes outside of Newcastle (I've got no idea of the direction!). We had a main drag, which of course seem endless to me because I was a little kid. I've been past that street in recent years - it's a block long! On the main drag we had a supermarket. We had a Chemist, a hardware store, and a fruit shop. Jimmy was the owner - ethnic (one of few in our town) and a very friendly man, especially with little kids. Jimmy is responsible for feeding me endless mandarins as a kid - they seemed so absolutely delicious! The skin was loose and there was never a seed to be found in any of the individual segments. I've honestly never had a mandarins as good as an adult. But there was one thing in Jimmy's shop that appealed to me above all else: cherry apples. Big fat bulbs of boiled confectionery coloured red and green jammed onto a ...

I was living in Hong Kong the first time I ever spent Christmas away from my family. I had only been there for about four months, so I decided to stay in HK - it's the only time I've enjoyed northern hemisphere winter weather on Christmas Day. I lived with my boyfriend and a girl named Jessie in a five hundred square foot apartment in Wan Chai. We had a kitchen but it was not fully equipped - there was no oven, only a portable gas cook top and grill. So I approached a friend who was a chef at a nearby brasserie and asked her if she would consider roasting a turkey for me on Christmas Eve. She agreed, keen, I know, to get in the Christmas spirit herself. I set off the to Welcome Supermarket and acquired the biggest frozen turkey I could lay my hands on. I didn't care that I was only feeding three people - I was happy to eat turkey sandwiches for a week afterwards if need be. Anyway, frozen turkeys take about three days to defrost. The one I'd bought was seal...

It's been such a long time since I wrote, but it's Christmas - one of my most favourite cooking seasons, and I have lots of Christmas stories and recipes to celebrate the occassion. Although I'm not Christian, I would like to remind everyone that Jesus is the reason for the season! So lets rejoice the tradition one man has spawned! Lets eat, drink, spend lots of money, fret about being broke, and breathe a heavy sigh of relief until we do it all again next year!

As a little kid, my one true passion in life was the pursuit of lollies (that's candy to all the folks in America). When either of my parents paid a visit to the corner shop in the evenings, my sister and I always hoped they would return with a little extra something for us. Quite often they did, but there were also times when they did not. These were very disappointing occasions indeed! Control over my lollie supply became a reality when my mother began paying my sister and I pocket money. I was paid a grand some of twenty cents a week (I do believe my sister got fifty cents, which after a couple of years of protest, I was awarded as well). With that twenty cent piece in my hand, my first thought was what lollie I could get for my money? My favourite chocolate bar at the time was Chokito - a very expensive proposition, at twenty five cents a bar - and certainly out of my price range. The more attractive option for me was a Golden Rough - at twelve cents each, I was le...

There have certainly been times in my life where funds were less then adequate and I've really had to put my thinking cap on where food is concerned. Back in the late eighties, being the exuberant and perhaps a little impetuous young woman I was, I up and quit my job without bothering to find another one to go to first. Not the best approach to maintaining a stable life. Never the less, in the weeks it took me to get myself gainfully re-employed, I concocted a number of meals that could be made out of the supplies I already had in my kitchen cupboard. The first was pancakes - easily done, thanks to a good supply of flour, eggs and milk. I had these for breakfast virtually every day (feeding a number of friends, also out of work at that time), served with maple syrup (until that ran out) or honey (until that ran out too). In those days I still drank orange juice, so I'd splurge the two dollars to buy a litre of Daily Juice - everyone started the day happy with a full belly. ...

It is a sorry fact that the age old tradition of afternoon tea has fallen by the wayside. Thanks to the proliferation of cafes, restaurants, brasseries and even pubs, not too many people entertain for afternoon tea anymore. Yet is was something that used to happen in our house all the time when I was a kid. An aunty and a bunch of cousins would call to say they were coming over for afternoon tea, and my mum would quickly get to the kitchen, whipping up any one of her classic afternoon tea favourite - sponge cake and cream, a batch of scones or even some humble old pikelets. Whatever it was, it came together quickly, and was on the table in time for the arrival of the guests, served up with a big fresh pot of tea. That's POT - not mug. We actually used to make tea from leaves, a fine art, I must say, which I spent my childhood developing, that seems to also have fallen by the wayside. There is nothing like a cup of tea poured from the pot - the water is boiled fresh (as oppo...

On the first day of High School, my father took me to the school hall, and much to my horror, he left me there by myself! Never the less, I was thrilled to be at high school - my last year of primary school had sucked big time, thanks to a last minute switch of horses (so to speak). High school was my chance to start over - a whole new bunch of kids, some from my old school, but many from other schools besides. I was thrilled when no one from my sixth grade class landed in my Year Seven class leaving the way clear for me to make a whole new group of friends. Standing alone amongst the crowd was one girl, Kathy Dent. She seemed odd, which was attractive to me because I felt odd. We latched on to each other like castaways adrift in the sea, and pretty much stayed friends for the rest of high school. Kathy was actually a super-brainy kid. I considered myself to be 'smart', but Kathy was intelligent . My quintessential failing was maths and science, whereas Kathy excelled in ...

I've only had two dogs in my life - Derek, my current canine and love of my life, and Tina, aka Scrunch, the dog of my childhood, whom we treated like people. When Scrunch arrived on the scene, I would have been three years old. She was a little black and tan bundle, supposedly my mother's dog, but absolutely devoted to my dad. Scrunch had a pretty good life as a dog - she first took up residence with us in Newcastle and then in Penrith, both houses having fairly decent back yards for a dog to roam around in. She didn't necessarily do much of that - her thing was sun baking. Scrunch wore a small round patch in the grass near the clothesline where she curled up to catch some rays every day while we were off at work, school or whatever. Our yard in Newcastle had a vegetable garden in it, in which Mum liked to grow all manner of things. I mostly remember the fresh mint, parsley and chives because I was often sent out to pick a bunch of one or the other (or all three) to ...

When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I was lucky to land myself a job in a brasserie called Post 97. It was part of a group of three food and beverage outlets on Lan Kwai Fong, the main nightclub district on Hong Kong Island. I took up working as a waitress to keep the cash flowing while adjusted to my new way of living (squished in with six million other people on a rock hardly big enough to swing a cat). During day shift we had no bar tender, so the two waiting staff (there were rarely more at that time of the day) had to prepare drinks as well as serve customers. Having a fully stocked bar at my disposal made me feel like Queen of my little dung-heap for some strange reason. Believe me when I say there is immense satisfaction in pulling a beer! At night the bar was managed by Alan, a prize winning cocktail maker, no less. His winning drink - vodka martini. He made it for me one time when I'd finished a Friday night shift. I was totally unprepared for the fire that r...

When I was about fourteen years old, the greatest thing happened: my dad was awarded a prize for being the number one salesman at the transport company he worked for. The prize was redeemable in overseas travel, and having just returned from a sales conference in Singapore (Dad's first ever trip overseas), my father was keen for the rest of the family to take a trip on a plane. He decided it was time for a family holiday. There was much debate over what our destination would be. My mother was keen on America, but the budget wouldn't stretch that far. I was keen on London, mainly because I was stark raving bonkers about Duran Duran at the time. I can't remember what my sister's preference was, but I think Dad was seriously considering New Zealand at one point. I don't know what made him about face, but one night, he finally announced that we were heading to Fiji. The flight there was absolutely shocking. Nobody told me they airconditioned the cabins to the sam...