Author Archives: Fiona

About Fiona

I'm a freelance writer based in Melbourne, Australia.

Dear Blog, Let’s catch up

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Blog,

I’m really sorry I haven’t been in touch, I’ve just been so busy. And I know it’s not much of an excuse, after all I’ve found time to twitter and email, facebook, but not you. I can’t imagine how you’ve been feeling.

But I hope you understand that now with hubby’s help I’ve ungraded your versions, I’m still in the process of overhauling your look, but you won’t know yourself – promise.

I can understand if you say, yeah I’ve heard this all before. Gosh, it was 1999 when I got my first blog and that’s gone now, poof into the ether – the accidental chef – but I’m good now, that won’t happen to you.

So what have I been doing in the last two years? I finished RMIT finally, after that year off, I went back and did my last subject, that was great.

I worked for a travel writer doing research and some writing. That was interesting too. Then I turned to my first trade of admin for a year working for the Uniting Church part-time to get back into the swing of work, and that was really nice too, great people – and then suddenly fell into my first official writing/ editing gig with ArtsHub. I get to talk to amazing people, go to great things, it’s quite amazing. Finally I feel like a writer, a real writer. And I get paid to write online!

I’m afraid, our other friends Novel, Children’s Fiction and Short Story have been sadly out of touch with me too. Even Shop, Cook, Eat Repeat.com has been off in the ether alone. I’m very sorry. But twitter has changed me. I’m so much more engaged with the virtual now. I hope you understand and we can all get together soon.

A couple of weeks ago I got to cover the Melbourne Writers Festival, and had the pleasure of my first media pass. I hope this doesn’t hurt your feeling my dear Blog, that I’ve been writing for someone else? It’s different you see, it’s not like us. Oh dear, this is awkward, but what I was hoping to do for a few days was share with you some of the things I wrote there. I don’t want you to feel like you’re just getting the left overs – though technically you are. I just wrote far more than I could use – possibly more than you want too. But I hope you like it.

It’s a bit retrospective – a couple of weeks ago now, so I’ve got a tiny blurb before each for your perspective gaining pleasure.

I’m really glad we’re back in touch – thanks for listening.

Don Watson: Language Lost

Posted on by
Reply

The following article was published by artsHub on Wednesday, 14 July 2010

MILDURA WRITERS FESTIVAL: Don Watson has been thinking about language for a long time. And he doesn’t like what’s been happening to it. Like a dog with a bone he keeps gnawing at what is being lost and trying to draw our attention to the degraded language that we are absorbing into our daily lives.
Don Watson: Language Lost

Don Watson has been thinking about language for a long time. And he doesn’t like what’s been happening to it. Like a dog with a bone he keeps gnawing at what is being lost and trying to draw our attention to the degraded language that we are absorbing into our daily lives. He makes us laugh at it when examples are pointed out to us, but even in that, there is a kind of despair.

It’s the weasel words, the ‘impactful’, the sentences of nouns strung like beads, as though proximity can provide relationships better than a verb; it’s the taking of ‘ownership’ instead of leadership. In a voice rich with wry, he remarks that had someone spoken in today’s tangled public parlance when he was a child growing up in Gippsland, ‘we would have just stared … or hit him with a shovel.’
There’s still something of the country way in Watson’s speech: a dryness, a tempered amusement and a quiet thoughtfulness. Perhaps these were also consequences of growing up in the country?
You’re less socialised, suggests Watson. ‘You spend a lot more time by yourself, probably quite good for your imagination if you don’t do yourself in in the hayshed one day.’ He pauses. ‘You observe more closely. In some way your experience is less extensive but more intense.’
When Watson was growing up, he says, English was still a living language. ‘Now I think it’s a half dead language that most people speak.’ The sort of English that he experienced in school (not that education in the 50s was the finest a person could get, he says) had less ‘issues’. He quotes John Brumby’s latest effort at putting out a discomforting fire, ‘We’ve had some issues over the last month or two. They’ve been issues across Australia and they have affected the Labor brand and I think you’re seeing that reflected (in the poll).’ (Victorian Premier John Brumby. The Age, 1 July 2010 from www.weaselwords.com.au )
The way management language has infected education is possibly what irks Watson most. ‘I think all educational institutions should recognise that part of their brief is to defend the language… to preserve tradition and values, real values, not values as mission statements… but the value of knowledge, of intellectual curiosity, of language.’ After all he says, language is the repository and the means of expression of those things.
Of all the things he learnt at school, what has stuck with him most has been Shakespeare. Now he bemoans, a child can pass through their entire education without reading a word of Shakespeare. ‘That seems to me a sort of insanity. It’s as if schools have to take up the roles of Microsoft and McKinsey and be as much like the wider society as possible – not true. Schools should come first, then McKinsey and Microsoft. The advertising agencies can take control of our brains later if they like.’
Having spent the tumultuous week of Rudd-Gillard federal upheaval in a tent in the Northern Territory, he’s more concern with what’s always ignored, the plight of aboriginal children. When you go somewhere in desperate need like a Northern Territory aboriginal community, he says, you’ll find all the standard words of education policy now used all over Australia, about ‘benchmarking’ students, the goals and values and mission of the education system.
‘But then you’ll find that they’re not getting any education — because the teacher isn’t there. You’ll find children who have been ‘benched marked’ at Year 10 national standard, but they can’t read. This language can be used to describe things that simply don’t exist. And to commit atrocities, in the same way that military language describes other kinds of atrocities, that we [because we’ve becomes so used to it] can easily brush off… These children are the equivalent of ‘collateral damage’ I suppose, but they wouldn’t be called that. They’d be called “shiny examples of the progress of Northern Territory Education going forwards.”’
Watson talks about the ‘learnings from Black Saturday’ and cries ‘What was wrong with ‘learn’ or teach?’’ You’ll find, he asserts that if you read through a modern education policy from either of the major parties there’s no mention of ‘teach, or ‘teachers’ or ‘teaching’. ‘It’s why they can’t think of anything dynamically. It’s all these dead abstractions and catch phrases – ‘learnings’ for God’s sake!’
Watson doesn’t mind new words – that’s fine. But clichés and new words that are used to replace a dozen more precise, colourful or evocative words; now that bugs him.
‘We have this language of infinite variety growing at the edges by thousands of words each year. But in the centre it’s becoming more and more depleted. So we use a word like ‘issues’ over and over again, rather than say what those so called issues might be – there might be a dozen specific words we might use, but we use one very general one.’
When asked if any one he’s met over the past seven years since Death Sentence-The Decay of Public Language was published has defended management-speak, he says, ‘No, never!’
So why then does this abstracted public language persist? We can see it serves a number of purposes. It’s used as a kind of tribal identifier, the management way to say ‘I am one of you. You are like me’. It fills air-time in a media-packed world and for those with the cameras pointed at them it’s the means to ‘duck and cover’. It obfuscates; builds ramparts. It’s used to make the dull sound important, the simple complex, to avoid blame like a child hoping that pointing a finger at the dog will get him out of trouble.
Why does Watson think it persists? ‘Because people are lazy.’ ‘This is a sort of assembly-line language for moving information, so that the people don’t think about what they’re moving. They don’t want to think about it. All you’re moving is information. That’s what we do now in our work. It’s passive aggressive and it’s depressing. And in organisations it becomes a means of bludgeoning people into submission.’
What’s worse says Watson, is how using this language shuts people off from within. ‘It actually puts walls up against your instinct to create with language or to think while you’re writing…It actually closes off those parts of your brain that might say to you as you write, “Ahh, maybe that means this”; or maybe “I could express it in this way”; or, “Here’s a different kind of simile or metaphor”; or “There’s an irony there that I might express”. Even, he says understanding “empathy is required in writing to this person”, as opposed to something more plainly bureaucratic. “There’s room here for a sentiment.” This language throws all those things out.’
Watson was a political speechwriter and adviser to Prime Minister Paul Keating, and is credited with writing perhaps the most enduring speech of Australian politics so far, The Funeral Speech for the Unknown Australian Soldier. Prior to that he had worked with Victorian Premiers John Cain and Joan Kirner and wrote satirical television with Max Gillies on The Gillies Report; all of which seem like less than obvious lines of work for a man with a PhD in history.
‘I think the last authentic user of Australian English was Keating,’ Watson says. ‘Whatever you thought of Keating he had a marvellous command of vernacular English.’
It was when he first met Paul Keating, Watson says that he realized the huge cultural difference between the western suburbs of Sydney and South Gippsland. Keating was never able to master the craft of ‘messaging’ says Watson, in the way that it’s now assumed a politician can only be understood by endlessly repeating the same phrase. Keating was able to sell complex policies through old-fashioned argument.
Watson’s experience working for Keating led to his book Recollections of a Bleeding Heart – A Portrait of Paul Keating. It was followed by the award winning Death Sentence, then Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words, American Journeys and his latest book, published last year, Bendable Learnings. In between there have been numerous articles and essays and even a film script, ‘The Man Who Sued God’.
At this week’s Mildura Writers Festival, Don Watson will be presented with the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal. The medal is awarded annually to an Australian writer whose work ‘best reflects the high standards and distinguished literary accomplishments that Philip consistently advocated and exemplified in his poetry’.
Watson jokes, he may be a little nervous that he’ll be shown up with all the poets and literati who’ll be in attendance. When faced with the intimate nature of the Mildura Writers Festival and the opportunities afforded its audiences to engage with the writers’, he confesses he’s the sort of person who tends to (try at least to) go the other way. He wants to head to the Mallee afterwards, and work on his next book, ever the bush muse.
The award he will receive in Mildura though recognises all that we hold dear in literature, and language, and that Watson strives to remind us of by ridiculing what we are letting it become.
‘The sound of a good race caller gives me great pleasure,’ Watson reflects, ‘the way you sometimes hear a natural user of colloquial language…’ There’s great beauty and pleasure in language. ‘It’s important that we keep some sort of standards alive and that we write as well as we can on each occasion, as Calvino said. I wish I could always speak like a 16th or 17th century English gent but I don’t, but we should try.’
And so an accolade from Shakespeare,
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
(Prospero, Epilogue, The Tempest)
Don Watson will be appearing at Opening Night – American Dreams Along with Kate Jenning, Per Henningsgaard, Tina Kane Chair: Morag Fraser Thursday, 15 July The Mildura Club The Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal Dinner Friday 16 July, Stefano’s Gallery 25 Mildura Writers Festival 14-18 July 2010
Program and online bookings can be accessed via www.artsmildura.com.au/writers

Not who you know, it’s who knows you

Posted on by
Reply

CREATIVE SYDNEY: People are always saying in the creative industries, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Now, with Creative Sydney’s 10×10 Project, under the umbrella of Vivid Sydney, it’s not just who you know, it’s who knows you.
Not who you know, it’s who knows you

People are always saying in the creative industries – it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Now, with Creative Sydney’s 10×10 Project, under the umbrella of Vivid Sydney, it’s not just who you know, it’s who knows you.

Festival Director, Jess Scully in our phone interview is flummoxed that I’m having trouble finding all the profiles on the Loop website and tries to lead me through it. There’s someone in the background nagging her to move her car and Creative Sydney is mid-way through – things are hectic.
‘Okay,’ she says returning to the conversation at hand, ‘so that whole project came about because every time I would go to meet with someone (and I’ve met with hundreds of people in the lead up to Creative Sydney, each of them would recommend two or three people who they would say were ‘just fantastic’ or I ‘just had to talk to’. And so I started to think about the power of personal recommendation…I wanted to find a way to harness that to provide some kind of business support for these outstanding creative people,’ she says.
The result was a wish list of iconic Sydney-based “creatives” who they then asked to be ‘curators’. It was a list of some well-known personalities and some lesser known, some odd choices and some clever ones. Some of the curators were Margaret Pomeranz, Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton of Sass & Bide; Rebecca Carrasco, Rhonda Roberts and Liane Rossler. Each of these curators, were then invited to select their own list of 10 people whose creative work inspires them, again all Sydney-based. This cabal of shoulder-taps is the 10×10 Project.
So it turns out the power of personal recommendation can be…ah powerful. As a result of this project these creatives have been given via Creative Sydney access to business support through the Federally funded, Creative Industries Innovation Centre (CIIC) run out of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).
‘So I’m just looking through the site now,’ says Scully returning to the net. If she was reading off the screen I still can’t find it. ‘They’re providing three tiers of support so for Creative start ups and entrepreneurs, they’re giving them access to market validisation, and um commericalisation programs.’ I’m not sure what they are either.
The three tiers means, start-ups and emerging creative businesses, mid-size businesses and established. ‘They’re hooking them up with CIIC business advisors to help them develop business plans and pitching strategies.’
CIIC business advisors mostly come with senior management, legal and consulting backgrounds and substantial experience in a wide variety of fields and are based all around the country.
‘They’re also connecting them with ATP Innovations who provide them with a one on one session to help them develop commericalisation strategies.’
ATP Innovations, if you were wondering, is a ‘technology commericalisation hub’ owned by the four major universities, UTS, UNSW, The University of Sydney and ANU. It is charged with maximising the benefits of what it does to its shareholders (the Universities) but it’s basically providing pretty interesting (if badly spelt) business training such as bizStart, bizConnect and bizCapital.
‘One of the projects,’ Scully continues, ‘will also be offered three months in the National Innovation Centre, which gives them a space where they can use a work station, meeting rooms, office administration and all kinds of mentoring as well.’
‘Those businesses or creatives on the list who are bit further along on their path – they’ll be offered access to some of the CIIC program partners to work with them on growth strategies.’
Some of these program partners could potentially be the law firm Freehills to work with them on intellectual property law, the IBM Australian Development Laboratory or Westpac for finance. ‘Then for the slightly larger companies, so those with over a million dollars turn over a year, they’re going to receive either a business review from a CIIC business adviser, as well as a business diagnostic which looks at human resources, marketing finance strategy and also importantly how they can grow, so helping to devise pathways for growth.’
Sounds pretty impressive. This is all great stuff for those who have been chosen, and who live in Sydney but it also feeds into a variety of government policy objectives too, particularly the Rudd government’s desire to achieve a ‘national innovation system’.
There’s been big budget increases in research and innovation (to $8.6 billion in 2009-10) under the auspicious that Labor will ‘support and foster innovation and creativity across the whole Australian economy. Investing in innovation and skills is critical to generating the jobs and businesses of the future.’ (http://www.alp.org.au/where-we-stand/21st-century-economy). So there’s cash.
The report the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research funded through Enterprise Connect and the Creative Industries Innovation Centre, ‘Creative Industries Economic Analysis Final Report’ and prepared by the Centre for International Economics Canberra and Sydney (I know the names just roll off the tongue) says:
‘There is a symbiosis between innovation, technological change and the creative industries. The creative areas of the economy do not merely ‘produce’ creative ideas for use by others. Creative areas and activities have been rapid adopters of some of the major technologies that have transformed lives, industry and the economy.’
So it would seem even if it didn’t know it Creative Sydney, the ‘local side’ to Vivid Sydney is also helping nation building – assisting in developing the economic viability and commericalisation of the local creative community.
‘Exactly, exactly,’ gushes Scully. ‘You know, its great to be acknowledged and its really wonderful to be able to be recognised by your peers (which is the feed back we’re getting from lots of the amazing people who are have been nominated in the programme) but what’s even better is really practical support that very often if you’re running a creative business you either can’t afford or you don’t know where to find. We’re trying to build Sydney’s place as Australia’s capital for creative industries.’
Is it going to work? Well, Scully’s circumspect. ‘We’re only two years in [with Creative Sydney] better not make any grand claims yet. I think the important thing is that we’ve drawn attention to the fact that this idea of the creative sector exists. I think the individual industries within the sector are very good at campaigning on their own behalf, for example the film industry and the music industry are quite organised and they’re good at doing that. But there are other industries within the sector who haven’t had the benefit of that kind of organization. This is an opportunity for them to get access to this kind of collective support.’
It was at this point that Scully had to go move her car because someone was getting pretty shirty behind her. But that left me opportunity to get to the website, and there certainly are some amazing creative people out there, who will now get more known.
Bios of all the 10×10 Project collaborators are on the website: http://www.theloop.com.au/creativesydney/10X10
The 10×10
Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton – Designers, founders of Sass & Bide
Adam Laerkesen – Artist/ Sculpture
Kelvin Ho – Architect
Edward Coutts –Davidson- Creative Director
Anna Lunoc DJ/ Producer/Designer
Mika Popov Artist Les Interieurs – Interior Design
Joshua Yeldmar – Artist
(check) 360 – landscape architects
Romance Was Born – Fashion label
Jordan Askill – Jewellery / Designer
Margaret Pomeranz – TV Presenter
Leon Ford – Writer / Director
Maeve Dermody – Actress
Nicole O’Donohue – Producer
Sarah Snook – Actor
Adam Arkapaw – Cinematographer
Adrian Wills – Filmmaker
David Michod –Writer / Director
Luke Doolan – Editor
Rob Hirst – Musician
Tim Levinson – musician
Mark Modre – Musician
Aaron Robinson – Musician / Presenter / Actor
Bones Atlas – Musicans
LC Beats – Musician/Beat Boxer/ Animator
Ed Prescott – Musician
MC Trey – Hip Hop Artist / Community Arts Activist
Mickey Grossman – Musician
Dan Neeson – Director / Videographer/Composer
Dean Belacastro – Liane Rossler – Co-Founder Dinosaur Designs and co-founder Green Ups
Zac and Zoltan Zavos – Publisher/Online Business
Angagram Studio – Ideas Office
Matt Levinson Journalist / Broadcaster Republic of Everyone – greening brands marketeers
Remo Giuffre –merchant / online entrepreneur/ global thinker
Circul8 – creative design company
Jenny Lacey – Editor-and-Chief online magazine LMNOP
Melinda Tually – Ethical trader / Producer / Jack of all trades
Michelle McCosker & Alasdair Nicol – Creative Director & Producer/ Artists/ Designers /Production Managers
Heidi Dokulil and Graeme Smith – Designers
Sixty 40 – digital crafts people production company
Ash Bolland – Film / Commerical Director
Benja Harney – Paper Engineer
Mini Graff – Artist
Renny Kodgers – Performer
Chris Wu – Pop Frenzy record label, touring and events
Billygoat and the Mongrels – Band
Joseph Allen Shea – Curator / Publisher / Gallerist
Rob Barton – Creative Director / Landscape Architect/Furniture Designer
Pia Van Gelder – Electronic Media Artist
Doug Bayne – Animator and VFX
Chris Bosse – Director of Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA)
Jennifer Kwok – Manager Customs House
Toko – Creative Design Company
One8one7 – Creative Design Company
Frank Minnaert – Architect Urban Future Organisation – Collective of Architects
Craig Rudd – Artist
Matt Chan – Architect
Damien Butler – Designer
Gabriele Ulacco – Architectural Designer and Educator
Sarah Benton – Architectural Designer and Lecturer
Lee Lewis – Theatrical Director
The STC Residents – Theatremakers
Kate Mulvany – Writer / Actor
Arts Radar – Arts Support and Production
Urban Theatres Projects – Theatrical Company
Carlos Gomes – Director /Theatre Designer
Clare Britton – Artist / Puppeteer
Jake Nash – Set Designer / Writer / Director / Artist
Stefan Gregory – Composer and Sound Designer
Eamon Flack – Artistic Associate Company B Belvoir Alice Babidge – Designer Rebecca Carroasco – Creative Director and co-founder Colman
Rasic Carrasco The Glue Society – Independent Creative Collective Like Minded Studio – Art Studio Nylon Studios – Studio of Composers and Sound Designers
Three Drunk Monkeys – Brand Ad Agency Mathematics – Design / Film Studio
Olives Friend Pop – Kid’s Clothing Designers
Rebecca Wolkenstein – Creative Agent / Publisher/ Entrepreneur
Soap Creative – Digital Agency
Young Guns – Award Show
The Critical Slide Society – Artist and Illustrator House
Rhonda Roberts – Director/Producer /Presenter / Artistic Director / Writer
Bangarra Dance Theatre – Dance company
Pip Runcimon – Designer
David Page – Composer
Rachel Perkins – Director / Producer
Warwick Thornton – Director
Gina Hall Sebastian Chase – Music Businessman and Manager
Ross Dawson – Futurist and Entrepreneur
Michela Ledwidge – Artist / Entrepreneur / Technologist
Pollenizer – Digital Media Company
Vasili Kaliman – Contemporary Art Dealer / Event Organiser and Online Publisher
Remember the Milk – Digital Media / Web App builders
David Holloway – Editor / Virtual World Creator Design Crowd – Online Graphic Design
Nick Holmes A Court – Buzz Numbers / Online Entrepreneur
Andrew Vande Moere – Architecture & Urban Design, Professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Luke Metcalfe – Internet Entrepreneur
Gary Hayes – CCO at MUVEDesign / Transmedia Educator

The fridge packed it in

Posted on by
1

The fridge packed it in over the weekend. At first it was a vague awareness that things seemed a bit warm, maybe the door had been left open. But by morning there was no doubt, it was warmer inside than out.

You think so little about fridges until they go wrong. They’re so solid and reliable. Sitting squatly, chilling. The hum in the night as the cycle keeps it rhythm, the accompaniment of insomnia. The opening window to contemplation of undiagnosed wants and needs. The treasure chest of good things, new things, temptations and treats. Boxy, white and always there.

But when they go, it’s a sudden surge of action and prioritisation. The rapid decanting of the soon to putrefy food stuffs, the ringing around to find additional cool stores at friends, relatives and neighbours, the investigation of the gloop that has accumulated in the nooks and crannies of the shelving, the butter compartment, and that have dropped to the bottom of the freezer and are now unidentifiable.

The man will come soon, so like whipping around the vacuum before guests, swiping on some lipstick, I’ve busied myself cleaning every shelf, every surface. It’s the most sparkling under-performing white-good around. Though perhaps it’s all futile. I suspect we will soon say our farewells. But now that that’s done and I await the my fridge’s fate, I can’t help thinking fondly back on our lives together.

My fridge was my first major household purchase. Nothing seemed to say ‘grown-up’ quite as much as spending hard earned dollars on white goods. Ah, the memories, the trip into Harvey Norman, considering the volumes, prices and efficiencies and fending off the salesman. Signing that hire purchase agreement.

My Fisher & Paykel took pride of place in the kitchen of the first flat that my now husband and I moved into together, our cute little second floor apartment with Harbour Bridge glimpses.
I loved that fridge, with it’s upside-down-freezerness, it’s white shiny exterior and inner gleam. Bought in the pre-christmas heat after a week of sour milk I was all the more appreciative of the invention and proliferation of home appliances. I positively cheered it’s ice making capacity.

My fridge has loyally followed us through numerous houses since. Up stairs and down. It waited patiently in storage when we had no place to put it. It survived the rough treatment of a band of pirate furniture removalists who scraped and dented it, and forever after set it to a slight incline that required propping.

It’s chilled Christmas hams and curry pastes, breast milk, bottles, purees, custards, cakes and leftovers, medicines and I suspect its held the same container of miso paste for some years now. I’ve let it be dribbled on with knocked over jams and tipped over bloody mince. The twin vegetable compartments have been soiled, grimed and survived. It’s been part of every family occasion in it’s own semi-silent way.

We’ve been together ten years, now. It’s been showing it’s age for some time. The bottom has been filling with ice rendering the fruit and veg compartment useless for that purpose. The ice grows glacial, creeping to the edge until the door hardly seals. The ice has to be hacked at, sometimes lifting as a single two foot wide piece. Almost every shelf has cracked. The fridge door regularly won’t shut properly, the seals splitting. External plastic bits drop off, like falling rocks on a cliff face..

And I’ve been disloyal. I’ve muttered at its small size, less suitable to a family than to a couple. I’ve shoved things in, forced doors open, shut, in and out. I’ve contemplated it’s replacement before now.

After all it’s all I could expect. Ten years is good in fridge-years these days. I’m sure under the powerful florescence, the hyperbolic musak, the chatter of the store I will look upon the crisp clean and new styles, the featured and glowing with enthusiasm and imagine a new life with an appliances. For the fridge is part of the lifestyle dream, the holder of so much more than food.
Alas my poor fridge. Now so still and quiet. Time to take down the magnets, pull off the notices, the drawings, the take-away menus, the last fond farewell.

Seventies Calorie Desserts

Posted on by
Reply

When the wind turns chill and the nights come early I get an urge for warm, sticky desserts. It doesn’t bode well for my thighs, but it’s happening again. 

Usually I get the idea in my head about an hour after dinner, sticking my head in the fridge looking for something extra to eat. Then when that doesn’t work I’ll start flicking through books salivating. That then leads to a dash to the supermarket at ten minutes before closing to get the extra ingredient I’m out of, just another small part of the obsession.

I’ve been going through some of my older recipe magazines, many that were once my Mum’s, and was quite delighted to look more closely at New Ideas for Delicious Cakes and Desserts (An Australian House & Garden publication, Margaret Master, Editor ). I can’t say exactly when it was published as it doesn’t say but it cost a $1.00 and I’m guessing it’s from about 1976.

Seventies recipe magazines were almost all in black and white, which makes things cooked in syrup look somewhat unappetising. The addition of colour however, didn’t necessarily improve things, as everything seems to be yellowy-brown, from the upside down apple torte to the hazelnut coffee cake. There was a bit of a fashion for coating the outside of things with cream and crushed nuts in the 70s too, particularly iced apricot soufflés in the case of this magazine so even that looks nutty brown.

But you can easily get past this by just getting excited by the curiosity of it – all the things you don’t eat much these days. Some for good reason, if anyone ever did eat rice fritters, which appear to be fried batter-coated milk-rice sprinkled with coconut and cream; that can’t be good for you.

Last night I became fixated on golden syrup dumplings, hardly a dish likely to get a heart foundation tick. They’re quite heavy and very sweet.  Basically the dumplings are made of a stiff pudding batter simmered to puffiness in sugar syrup that reduces to a fudge. The raising ingredients give them a bit of lightness while the outside absorbs lots of golden toffee sauce. Serve them with ice-cream and you’ve got a pudding that will keep you in a deep comfy chair for some time.

They’d be better I suspect if the butter and sugar were creamed together instead of being rubbed in, to make them a bit lighter – an experiment for next time. Or I have to get better at rubbing in, and learn from master scone bakers to make the method work better.

The night before last my dessert obsession took me to Crepes with Orange sauce. This is a classic that should be brought back. Crepes are really easy, if a bit time consuming.

Margaret Fulton taught me (Margaret Fulton’s Kitchen Hardie Grant 2007) that the reason you should make the batter half an hour before is to let the starch swell. Which is odd as the crepes turn out just as well with gluten free flour.

I used the last of a quite sour orange juice in the sauce and it was delicious. And have since poured it over crumpets for breakfast too,(it’s like a rindless runny marmalade – yum!). For the true 70s effect these really should be flamed with warmed brandy but for every day eating a sprinkle of Cointreau adds all the decadence you could want.

Golden Syrup Dumplings

(based on New Ideas for Delicious Cakes and Desserts (An Australian House & Garden publication, Margaret Master, Editor)

DESCRIPTION: A heavy batter made of self-raising flour with butter rubbed in, to which you mix in an egg and a bit of milk that is cooked in spoonfuls in sugar syrup for about 10 minutes without a lid and another 7-8 minutes with the lid on. The batter is then raised and fluffed, turning golden on the outside and like a steamed pudding on the inside while the syrup reduces to a fudgy topping. Best served hot with ice-cream.

For the syrup is:

  • 2 cups of water
  • half a cup of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of golden syrup, but its bloody difficult to measure
  • and a knob of butter, a couple of heaped teaspoons

Dissolve the sugar and golden syrup in the water, melt in the butter then bring the syrup to the boil. Use a sauté pan or some other pan that is wide, flat and has shortish-sides and a lid, preferably. Something you might make risotto in. 

Let it come to the boil while you mix up the batter but if you’re taking awhile to get to that bit add some extra water as it will reduce a lot more as the batter cooks and might burn or become toffee if it gets over cooked.

The batter is:

  • 1 cup of self raising flour
  • pinch of salt
  • 30g butter (1 oz or near enough to a tablespoon)
  • an egg
  • and 1/3 cup milk, roughly 80mls

In a bowl, sifted or fluff the flour with a pinch of salt. Most store bought flour comes sifted and only gets lumpy when it’s been sitting around in the cupboard for six months or its really humid. Sifting aerates the flour, removes lumps and mixes the ingredients together well.

Rub the butter into the flour, which means squeezing all the large bits of butter into the flour with your fingers so that as you keep squeezing and mixing it becomes grainy and ‘bread-crumb’ like. You don’t want to melt the butter with your hands.

Make a hole in the yellow grainy flour-butter mix, crack in the egg and the milk. Stir this around so that there are no lumps or sloppy bits and it’s all mixed together smoothly but is still thick.

Drop teaspoonfuls of the batter into the syrup leaving some room for them to spread and let it bubble away for about ten minutes. The dumplings will expand a bit and the syrup will partially evaporate, thickening and becoming darker. Cover it to reduce the evaporation and make it a bit steamy and cook another seven or either minutes.

Transfer them to serving bowls with a slotted spoon and pour over some of the sauce. Eat them straight away with big blobs of cream or custard or plain ice-cream.

Crepes with Orange Sauce

Thin pancakes briefly warmed and soaked in orange syrup so they become a bit soft and absorb some of the flavour.

A basic crepe batter is:

  • 1 cup of plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon of sugar
  • a pinch of salt
  • an egg 
  • and 1 cup of milk mixed with half a cup of water

Crepes are meant to be thin, so they don’t use raising agents and the batter is runny. 

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Make a well in the flour and crack the egg into the hole with a little of the milk. Swirl the egg and milk gradually eroding the flour and incorporating it, adding a slops of milk as you go until all the mixture is smoothly combined. Allow to stand for half an hour or so.

Wipe a crepe pan or non-stick frypan (about 20cm across) with vegetable oil and heat over a moderate flame. Pour in approximately a third of a cup of batter and quickly swirl to evenly spread. Watch carefully, when the mixture starts to form bubbles that plop like lava, flip and cook the other side for a couple of minutes. Transfer to a plate and fold in half then in half again to make a kind of quarter circle, and keep warm. Repeat with the remaining mixture.  This should make six to eight crepes.

Orange syrup:

  • 1 cup orange juice
  • 1 cup water
  • long strips of orange zest if desired
  • a few teaspoons of Cointreau, Grand Marnier, Drambuie or other liqueur to serve if desired, crushed nuts might also be nice.

The syrup is made by simmering the orange juice with the water, and zest if desired until you have one cup of syrup, what is usually referred to as reducing by half. It will take about 10 to 15 minutes. The zest adds some extra zing and texture.

Once all the crepes are cooked, return them to the pan and pour over the sauce. Allow to simmer gently until warmed through, then serve a couple of crepes per person with some of the sauce, and desired accoutrements of liqueur, cream or ice-cream. 

Barbeques

Posted on by
Reply

Today Sunrise, the Channel 7 chirpy breakfast television show posed the probing survey question, ‘do you use the wok-burner-thingy on your barbeque?’ (http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/b/sunrise/1184/kochie-real-men-dont-use-wok-burners ). The suggestion was that it was an unnecessary bit of over-packaging, and of course, such deep issues need discussion and analysis.

The discussion that followed suggested that it was a wifely domain, while the blokes did the important meat turning tasks, real men don’t wok apparently. Images of backyards around the country set up as catering production lines for smoking and tossing food came to mind, along with bickering and elbow knocking and tomato sauce on the toes. I didn’t get back to the show to find out the final result of the poll, maybe it will be on tomorrow. Leaving aside the gender issues, I felt more bemused by the universality implied in the question, that everyone has a barbeque with a wok-burner.

Not being the owner of a barbeque, let alone one with a wok burner thingy I felt somewhat put out by this question. I’ve long felt something of a consumer pariah for not having my own indoor/outdoor patio lifestyle area. Now I feel underprivileged for not having the barbeque either.

I confess to drooling over Barbeque Galore catalogues admiring large shiny barbeques with five burners and griddles and wok burners and thermostats on the roasting lids. They’re the Hummer of home entertaining, the lifestyle statement barbeque, and that much grunt and shine has a hefty price tag (anywhere from moderately expensive to astronomical), incorporating the levy for Acquiring Lifestyle Envy (ALE), the ‘gee what a big barbeque you’ve got’ appeal. So discussions on the marketing differentiation and add-ons that keep piling up, like wok ring size enhancements leave me holding the packed sandwiches from home in the outdoor entertaining stakes.

I’ve often looked at the wok burner and thought goodness, wouldn’t it be interesting to toss the vegetables outside, but then the thought follows but why would you? Apparently, many people who buy them have the same issue, thus the survey. Preparing the vegetables, transferring them outside, tossing them with the sauces and then serving them up seems a process that requires benches, an often under-acknowledged cooking requirement, plus the sink and easy access to the pantry and fridge. Hence, not that much fun out of doors.

The wok burner may be the barbeque equivalent of the microwave programmable casserole buttons, I know of no one who knows how to use all the functions available on their microwave or who has shown much interest in the discovery. What a job that must be, to think up functions that no one will try using? You have to ask yourself what are you going to use your barbeque for? And the answer is generally to burn sausages and steaks, especially if men with beers are left to do it.

Until this Sunrise question was posed I hadn’t even considered how many of these barbeques must spend most of their lives under the black vinyl cover on the outdoor entertaining area gathering the gritty muddy dust of the elements. Though a few seconds contemplation made this seem obvious. Loved for a summer and then left in the rain, wheeled out summers after sporadically, after the glow of new ownership has waned. Like so much stuff we don’t need, and hence don’t use it sits as statement to our excesses. Well, for some, otherwise where would the envy be?

So, while the question initially made me feel even more marginalised from 21st Century life after due consideration, maybe its okay to not have a barbeque with a wok burner in my life. Though I still think the thermostat roasting covers are cool.

ELECTIONS

Posted on by
Reply

Tomorrow Australia will vote on whether to give Kevin Rudd a promotion or to keep John Howard in the job. I have never felt so confused about an election. Not that I am undecided, I have no doubts about my own convictions, but I’ve no idea who will win.

All the polls have consistently predicted a huge Labor win, but when it comes down to the seat-by-seat wins necessary it doesn’t seem clear at all. There have been plenty of Melbourne Cups where the favourite hasn’t seemed even in contention on the day.

I’ve come to accept that I have a very limited understanding of the Australian people. I never understood how Howard came to govern in the first place let alone how he’s managed to stay there. He has long appeared to me a person of poor character, someone who has white-anted his way to the top then ruled with an iron fist, a brutal agent of his own self-interest. Yet apparently most Australians see him as a wise leader, sturdy, dependable, good for the country. Clearly I am very wrong.

Nor do I hold to the view that he has managed the economy well, if anything I believe we have been disastrously led. Private debt has sky-rocketed; the labour market has been radically fractured and destabilised; asset inflation has run rampant warping investment direction and driving financial circularity rather than building future growth and sustainability in the economy; the resources boom has been squandered just as it has saved us from otherwise mediocre performance.

Rather than seeing the country as in an economically good position I see it as precarious. With record low unemployment, interest rates and inflation; asset values rising as if there were no limit, and all around us wealth and prosperity? It’s the undertow beneath the sparkling water we need to look for. Whoever wins is going to have to tackle global instability and recession. Which is why the sudden change of tack in the election campaign does have some bite. I’m not the only one who thinks it’s all about to go down the toilet.

And I see just as many people ‘relaxed and comfortable’ for whom it truly is ‘all good’ as I see those obviously straining, stressed, fearful, alienated. Australians now work harder, accept greater burdens without question, are more cynical, stressed, and afraid to admit their concerns, their fears and insecurities. Yet seem muted. And I don’t understand the dichotomy. Is it a quixotic dream?

I so want John Howard and every miserable bastard on his front bench thrown out of office. I believe the Howard era will come to be seen as a time of lost opportunities, of pig headed, scandalous waste. But a hatred of Howard doesn’t automatically flow to a love affair with labour.

As a technocrat, an ambitious manager, Rudd embodies a politics of corporate culture. Not a change of government so much as a restructure and the promotion of a new CEO, a minimal impact choice. There are important differences of methodology rather than ideology. Even so the promise is that within the framework of steady as she goes, some things will be acted on, some better outcomes will be achieved. I want to believe it will be different I’m prepared to overlook the similarities. But it doesn’t feel like a fresh wind of change. I don’t even get the feeling that many people like him. They just don’t like the other guy more.

At times through this election I have had the sense that many people are yearning for the opportunity to vote, to tell someone what they really think. And I have a sense that they really care, even if they are only muttering under their breath. The trouble is I still don’t know which way they’ll go.

BOOK SHELF: Savour the Pacific

Posted on by
Reply

Open this book just to dream of tropical climes and holidays. My copy is showing how addictive this can be after six years as the insides slowly peel away from the well-thumbed soft cover. But what better compliment to a cook book that getting used.

Annabel Langbain is apparently a bit of a New Zealand celebrity though none of her TV shows have managed to get across the Tasman and she’s relatively unknown in Australia. But who cares, she writes fab food. Unlike the glut of pop-culture chefs her cooking is genuinely fresh, simple and inspiring.

The sections follow a Pacific day, breakfast to lunch to pre-dinner drinks, mains and desserts. Ranging from exotic and expensive like lobster and quail to the everyday like spicy pork meatloaf or curried eggs it’s can be dipped into for all sorts of occasions and budgets. Unsurprisingly given the pacific emphasis it concentrates on seafood and fish, and the flavours skew between India and south east Asia. The cocktail style h’orderves and appetisers are particularly good, like vegetable pakora, duck and mango rolls and cardamom and coriander spiced fish sticks. A bonus is the cupboard recipes at the back for everything from chilli jam to asian barbeque sauce and the scrummy mint and ginger pesto.

This was the first place I saw wonton wrappers cooked into crisp serving cups, in this case to serve shredded duck with cucumber and a tangy tamarind sauce. But a few years later wonton cups seemed to pop-up everywhere. I can’t prove it but she seems a cook ahead of the curve.
The layout is engaging, peppered liberally with beautiful pictures by Kieran Scott. It’s square shape makes it easy to keep open and the text is clear enough to read when your hands are in the midst of squishing something. Plus there are no weird font size changes or distracting italics.

Savour the Pacific is a terrific cookbook for anyone who loves tropical flavours but is also for those wanting to try something a little exotic without too much effort.

Savour the Pacific: A Discover of Taste
Annabel Langbein © 2000
An Annabel Langbein Book
The International Culinary Institute Press Ltd
Available from Amazon.com or www.annabel-langein.com

DENCH bakers

Posted on by
Reply

Note: Dench has been refurbished and expanded since this was written and has a more extensive menu these days.

Dench bakers is quintessentially North Fitzroy, a mix of rustic and modern, refined punk, glamorous grunge, which is to say grown ups pretending to be young, and the young pretending to be grown up. It combines organic bread and baked goods with coffee, it’s the home-style that no one really has at home.

Display cases are filled with escargot and chocolate croissants, banana cake, bee-stings, and brownies. They serve breakfasts and lunch, from granola to prepared paninis and sandwiches of in-vogue ingredients like bresala and provolone with tomato and salad; roast lamb with cranberry, chilli and plum relish or the simpler mayo lathered tuna and salad. Eggs come poached or scrambled with extras like bacon, avocado or mushrooms. There’s French toast, plain toast, filled or plain croissants savoury or sweet muffins. Specials might be a duck and shiitake risotto or a goats cheese and prosciutto omelette.

Breads sit on exposed frame shelves, dark and burnished, dusted in loose flour of creamy whites. There’s brioche, spelt, olive and walnut, foccacia and ciabatta, raisin and stone, most around $5 to $6 dollars.

Minimal colours and décor give the feel of being inside a panorama box that could be hosed out after a big night. The floor is marble composite, walls are exposed white-painted brick, arty photos hang well framed, a plump flower arrangement looks out the window. The ceiling is half painted boards and a plaster box hiding electrical cabling that can’t get inside the walls. An inexplicable large alfoil dolphin hangs over the entrance. Down lights are suspended from wire tightropes. Noise echoes: staff chatter, blues, jazz or whining folk, clunks from the open kitchen at the back. Distressed wood tables and panelling combines with grey metal, cool and warm.
There’s style and effort being taken. Glasses of water come unbidden, table service is attentive and easy going, not overly fast or slow. The staff are friendly and colourful in personality not dress, all wear black t-shirts.

Customers sit at compact tables along the wall or at the window bench looking across to the Piedmonte’s loading bay and scungy terraces where herbs and bright flowers thrive in pots. It’s not a group venue. About twelve can sit inside and about the same take up positions under red Genovese coffee umbrellas outside close to the Scotchmer traffic belching in sporadic flows. Solo readers and note takers contemplate over coffee. Groups of twos and threes, with prams or dogs chat as likely dressed in overalls as Sass & Bide jeans.

And if you don’t want your home-style out, there’s a selection of home-style meals and dips to take home.

DENCH Baker 109 Scotchmer Street, Fitzroy North VIC 3068 +61 3 9486 3554

PIEDMONTE’S

Posted on by
Reply

Piedmonte’s supermarket is something of an inner city suburbs icon, an easy to access got-everything store, tram-line and parking out the front, central to the North Fitzroy shopping strip.

It has an old-worldy atmosphere, in that the building is sort of 60s and the signage isn’t too flashy. Dust and flies linger on window ledges and it feels like not much has changed in decades. The roof inside is high above, thanks to the mezzanine upper floor, climbed to on wooden stairs where a non-digital photolab and shelves of tupperware, household goods, and party goods gather dust. A coffee shop and nut bar are seemingly never occupied yet continues optimistically. But downstairs is in constant motion, six to eight cashiers will be whipping the streaming customers through from early morning to late night every day of the year.

Wafts of fresh baked Turkish bread and roasting chickens drag you in. A dog’s almost always tied up outside and there’ll be a slightly dishevelled busker. Bikes cling to anything solid and the Big Issue seller shouts “Echh-shoe” somewhat incomprehensibly and you’ll later see him browsing the fresh pasta.

It’s a supermarket that has to straddle some of the poorest and richest residents of inner Melbourne, as well as the diverse range of ethnicities. You can pick up imported French creme fraiche, organic ice-cream, peking duck, fresh fish, puy lentils, fresh pasta sauces, wiltof, baby spinach, Maldon sea salt, toilet paper, lettuce, bananas, lamb chops, fresh foccacia, dutch biscuits, or just bread and milk. The deli is well stocked with hard and soft cheeses, olives, antipasta, dips, salads and salamis; and excellent smoked bacon. The eclecticism makes it a haunt for the curious, but just confuses and bewilders the uninitiated like a spiders web. It takes work to walk out with just the milk you went in for.

In summer its chill is a relief, while for the rest of the year it brings on a shiver. The dairy case aisle particularly needs thermal wear. Sunny weekends bring in the picnickers grabbing extra beer and dips before heading to Edinburgh Gardens, during the Grand Final there’s hardly a soul around, service is quick on Cup Day around three too. In winter its lighted footpath comforts the tired and homeward bound commuters. Best avoided Sunday evenings when seemingly everyone in the surrounding area runs out of milk. In spring the fresh jonquils by the door and brilliant yellow daffodils distract and bring on impulsiveness.

It’s an interesting place, but all supermarkets have an element of interest, it’s the subtle differences that get us through homogeny.

PIEDMONTE’S SUPERMARKET
Corner Best and Scotchmer Streets, North Fitzroy +61 3 9481 1600