My greedy lunch

Last week, I attended Guy Mirabella’s cooking class at The Essential Ingredient. I trawled through the long list of classes for weeks before deciding this was the one for me. The main factor that won me over was that the class was ‘meat-free’, which meant I could eat everything. It also promised to be ‘garden-driven’. This appealed to me, because even though my vegetable garden consists of a few straggly sticks of sage, I like to think that one day in the future I’ll have a quarter-acre block abundant with edible delights.

Watermelon and bread salad

[Watermelon]

Broad bean soup

Guy Mirabella runs the cafe ‘Shop Ate’ in Mount Eliza. Interestingly, he began his culinary career designing cookbooks and has helped produce books for Stephanie Alexander, Christine Manfield and Charmaine Solomon. At the class, Guy insisted that he was not really a chef or even a cook; he said that he is simply a designer who enjoys cooking. I think he sells himself a little short. The man is multitalented!

We made several delectable dishes including cauliflower bread and butter pudding, eggplant chutney and a watermelon and bread salad. These are going to feature in Guy’s upcoming cookbook, which I can’t wait to get my hands on…

Cauliflower bread and butter pudding

[Watermelon]

Sauteeing leek and mushrooms

Guy declared that the word of the day was ‘rustic’. This was license to tear food rather than chop it, and to artfully pile everything on the dish rather than preciously ‘plate up’.  Guy taught us that looks are important – but not in terms of perfection. As usual, food lessons can be applied to life.

Guy’s food is the kind of food that you can imagine eating on a fantasy Sunday picnic with a raucous group of family and friends who all bring a plate of lovingly prepared home grown goods. A bit like in a little Italian film on SBS!

Guy breaking eggs in the mushrooms

[Watermelon]

Endive (?) salad

I couldn’t leave without snapping up Guy’s last book, Eat Ate. As expected, it’s beautiful and I look forward to preparing some more of his ‘rustic’ recipes!

Fig, pomegranate, blood orange and passionfruit meringue

]]> http://itpleasesus.com/2010/09/20/guy-mirabella/feed/ 6 http://itpleasesus.com/2009/12/22/vegetarian-principle-1/ http://itpleasesus.com/2009/12/22/vegetarian-principle-1/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:00:29 +0000 Saskia http://itpleasesus.com/?p=924  

Vegetarian delights...

A few weeks ago, my chiropractor did this crazy test on me called a bioimpedance analysis. Apparently, I need to eat more protein and put on two kilograms of muscle. Otherwise, I’m fine.

It got me thinking about healthy eating on a quasi-vegetarian diet. Frankly, I sometimes think that we should focus on healthy cooking just as much as we focus on tasty cooking – especially for ‘everyday’ eating. (Having said that, I have a (not scientifically derived) theory that pretty much anything made at home, from relatively unprocessed natural food, is good for you on some level.)

I have a book called The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook. To be honest, the recipes contained within it are pretty uninspiring, but it has a useful section at the start that is all about nutrition for vegetarians.

I’ve read it carefully, and I also got Nutrition for Dummies and Nutrition Now out of the library. This is what I have found out about protein for vegos:

• Everyone needs protein in their diet for cell growth, tissue repair and a whole lot of other functions.
• Each protein in your body is composed of 23 amino acids (though this exact number varies slightly in the different books).
• Your body can make all but eight of these. These are the ‘essential’ amino acids. Together, these are referred to as a complete protein. (Again, the actual number of essential amino acids varies in different books. One book said there were nine.)
• Animal protein sources (meat, eggs and milk etc.) contain all eight (or nine) essential amino acids.
• Vegetable sources do not. Each group of vegetarian food (e.g. dairy, nuts/seeds, pulses, and grains) contains some, but not all eight/nine essential amino acids.
• However, when eaten together, vegetarian food sources can combine to create a complete protein meal.
• One book I have says that the soy bean is a complete protein (i.e. it has all essential amino acids) but another book says that it is just nearly complete. (Quinoa and buckwheat are also nearly complete.)
• Amino acids can not be stored for very long by the body. However, the books also vary with regards to exact the time periods in which a complete protein needs to be consumed. Nutrition for Dummies says that all essential amino acids must be eaten at the same meal. The Essential Vegetarian says that all must be eaten within a few hours of each other. Nutrition Now says that all essential amino acids only need to be eaten within the same day.

Regardless of the exact details, the principle to be drawn from all this is the same: vegetarian diets should be varied. It is a good idea to combine different food groups in each meal. This makes sense, doesn’t it?! It’s why we like to eat rice with our vegetable stir fry; pitta-bread with our felafels; and milk and yoghurt with our museli.

This also makes sense in terms of general cookery principles. If we vary the colour, texture and tastes in one meal, we are more likely to create something that is appealing, satisfying and nutritionally balanced. I imagine this variation and balance concept applies to non-vegetarian food as well, in terms of getting a good range of other important nutrients.

This week, I plan to make a chickpea/cous-cous (pulse + grain) or lentil/fetta (pulse + dairy) salad to take to a Christmas party. Please return later in the week to see my complete protein vegetarian creations…

Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist! But all this information is an accurate reflection of the books that I have read.

Some fine wine!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was given an ‘Introductory Wine Course’ at the Prince Wine Store for my birthday. This was, indeed, a very exciting gift.

I have spent the past three Tuesday nights learning about wine – something which, although I drink a lot of, I know incredibly little about.

The main thing I have learnt is that there is a lot to know about wine that I don’t know. However, I do now feel a little more confident when faced with extensive wine lists and bottle shop aisles.

From this point forward, I plan to be a little more adventurous when it comes to choosing vino.

In times gone by, whenever I went to a bottle shop, I would head straight for the Marlborough New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in the $15-$25 range. Apparently this is not cool at all, if you know anything about wine!

But, I can defend this choice. The standard NZ sauvvie is popular because it is reliable. Pretty much whatever you select will be palatable and will not offend anyone. However, it is this very blandness and uniformity that is so affronting to wine-people. Wine-people like complexity, depth, individuality and balance. I note: as was apparent when sampling fish sauce, what applies to consumables can also be applied to people. While such deeper wines/people may be more challenging, the ultimate reward is greater (usually).

From now on I will look beyond the generic NZSB. Last weekend I tried a 2007 Arboleda Carmenère from the Valle de Colchagua in Chile (tannic and tart, ripe cherry tones). The weekend before that I drank a 2008 Plozner Friulano from Friuli in Northeast Italy (light and acidic, reminiscent of apple juice and lemons).

Now it is fortifieds week. On Tuesday I brought home a Lustau San Emilio PX Pedro Ximenez from the class. It tasted exactly like sultanas, which gave me a good idea. I plan to use it to make a Christmas Pudding and I found a recipe on the internet which uses a fortified. (Stay tuned over the coming week for that adventure…Very excited.)

The wine course has also taught me to consider more thoroughly what I am drinking. I have been looking at, smelling, tasting and thinking about my wine much more carefully. Until now, I have tended to throw back whatever it was that was placed in my glass.

This little skill reminds me of the Zen saying: ‘when drinking tea, just drink tea’. I guess it means that you should devote your full attention to the current moment. Very Eckhart Tolle.

This has translated into other areas of my life. On the weekend I took a lovely trip to visit my friend L. in Castlemaine. I was walking along the street sniffing the air and thinking, ‘hmmm…there’s some eucalypt…and some honeysuckle…and some vegetal notes…’ (I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m losing it.) This wine caper is very enjoyable and I’m fast learning that there’s a whole new world of taste out there just waiting to be explored…

Here are some websites about wine which I have been perusing:

James Halliday Wine Companion – I haven’t joined this one yet but it looks great. Thousands of tasting notes and information about wineries and their cellar doors.

Decanter – The wine magazine. There are some interesting articles and ‘how to’ videos aimed at beginners.

Wines of Australia – lots of information about Australian wines and wineries.

These two blogs looked interesting also.

Update: Em’s friend, C., has pointed me in the direction of The Wine Front this morning. This looks interesting – similarly to the Halliday site, you pay a fee and gain access to a whole lot of tasting notes and articles.

I had a magnificent Great Aunt, named Ruthie, who lived at Lorne on Victoria’s southwest coast. Her house was an imposing white weatherboard, hidden behind a dense hedge, across the road from the beach.

In her sun room she had scripted over a doorway, “Non fatuum huc persecutus ignem”: It is not by some idle whim that I came to this place.*

Ruthie had a keen interest in cooking and was not afraid of expressing a strong opinion. I have a distinct memory of her casting her eye over Jill Dupleix’s New Food (this must have been 1993) and disdainfully declaring that ‘there was nothing new in it’.

After her death, we also discovered the gem, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, on a bookshelf. If you ever see this in a second-hand bookshop, I implore you to PICK IT UP.  No one but Mrs. Beeton can instruct you in quite the same way how a dutiful wife may skin a rabbit for her husband’s dinner.

It was from Ruthie that I first heard of the restaurant and cooking school, Sunnybrae. This was a long time ago, in the days before I cared about such things, but I figured that if Ruthie was impressed, then it must be impressive.

I was extremely fortunate to have the chance to attend an all day cooking class at Sunnybrae on the recent Melbourne Cup Monday. Sunnybrae is run by the very knowledgeable George Biron and it is in Birregurra – about a half hour drive into the hinterland behind Lorne.

George informed us straight out that it was to be an ‘adults cooking class’. There was no hand-holding. We whipped through about 15 dishes in the day. The notes George gave us were sparse so listening and concentration was a must.

We made some great dishes and I was introduced to a number of new tastes such as perilla and the afore mentioned sea urchin.

An undoubted highlight for a city girl such as myself was picking the asparagus straight from the expansive vegetable garden and then cooking and eating it immediately (with blood orange and a maltaise sauce).

Harvesting asparagus for our lunch

My other favourite dishes that we made were:

• Avocado and apple salad with coriander and lime.
• River shrimp and calamari with aioli.
• Perilla and Thai basil salad.
• Pavlova roll.
• Star anis and lime ice cream.

Our lunch, featuring calamari salad...

However, while we learnt many new dishes, it was the ‘philosophy’ that George wanted to impart. He told us that he wanted us to remember:

• Cook with what is seasonal and fresh.
• Be inspired by what is at the market; plan your menu after shopping.
• Keep dishes simple and focus on flavour and texture.

Asparagus: very fresh, very seasonal!

I also was observing George a bit and noticed that he rarely used any sort of measuring implement for his dishes. He prepared everything using taste and feel and knowledge. That is something that I definitely have to work on – being an intuitive cook rather than sticking blindly to recipes. I guess it’s something that takes a lot of experience but I’m working on it!

All in all – not only did I learn a lot about food and cooking, but Sunnybrae is also a beautiful and special place and I highly recommend visiting if you ever get the chance.

Rhubarb in the vegie garden

* Well, this is what my mother once told me, anyway. A little internet searching reveals a literal translation of something like: ‘It is not foolish to follow passion/fire to this place’. Someone else has translated it as: ‘It is no will-o-the-wisp that I have followed here’, which seems closer to mum’s translation. Any latin scholars out there who can help?!?

UPDATE 23rd November: I looked up the source book cited for the will-o-the-wisp translation. It is: Maxwell, Gavin (1964) Ring of Bright Water, 9th edn. (First published 1960.) Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd.: London.  The book is about a man and an otter who lived in the remote wilderness of the West Highlands of Scotland. The quote is on the first page (p.3 in my edition). The book starts as follows:

I sit in a pitch-pine panelled kitchen-living room, with an otter asleep upon its back among the cushions on the sofa, forepaws in the air, and with the expression of tightly shut concentration that very small babies wear in sleep. On the stone slab beneath the chimney-piece are inscribed the words ‘Non fatuum huc persecutus ignem’ – it is no will-o’-the-wisp that I have followed here.’