July 2021
The Kindness of Neighbours who Cook
Again in Covid lockdown we are forced to rely on our own cookery skills and, to judge from some missing items on the grocery shelves, a lot of baking is being done once more. I managed to impress a group of friends with Walnut Shortbreads (my own invention) on an outing to the Embroiderer’s Guild of NSW just before lockdown, and then revived a recipe for Crisp Lemon Thins, which I hadn’t tried for years and wondered why. They are associated with Greenmount Homestead, a fine old Queenslander near Mackay, bequeathed to the community by Dorothy and Tom Cook, and still presided over, when I visited it many years ago, by housekeeper Gloria Arrow, a descendent of the South Sea Islanders who came to work the Pioneer Valley cane fields in the nineteenth century. The recipe appeared in The Homestead Kitchen Recipes, the sort of little local fund-raising cookbook which I revel in, reflecting, as they almost always do, the Australian homes out of which they are born, in sometimes typical and sometimes idiosyncratic ways. I assume that Greenmount had a lemon tree growing in the yard. Having great gifts of lemons from friends and family (this winter has yielded a bounty of backyard lemons) I was spurred naturally to make up these lovely lemony biscuits. Some neighbours around the corner, who had given me a book, received a small containerful of the biscuits, and my nextdoor neighbour another. Of course, given lockdown rules, these have to be left with a note, not given hand to hand. Likewise a rich chocolate mousse cake and then gingernuts followed from nextdoor. And then a return of Chelsea Bun. All very welcoming and keeping us in touch through our shared humanity. The great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu remaked that, ‘The kindness of words creates trust, of thoughts depth, and of giving love.’
June 2021
Tripe Australian Style
In the depths of an Australian winter the mind travels naturally to warming foods, including that old-fashioned favourite tripe. Ringing my butcher, I find he no longer stocks tripe – not a matter of choice but of sourcing: he is forced to buy it in such huge quantities that he cannot possibly sell it all. (Purchasing offal in Sydney, I must say, became much more challenging when the Homebush abattoirs closed in the 1980s and slaughter moved to the country.) Fortunately, visiting another area of the city, I came across a Chinese butchery with not one, but two types of beef tripe: the familiar honeycomb as well as flat sheets of blanket tripe.
Mine ended up with an Italian flavour, cooked with lots of onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes, stock and herbs for over three hours until tender – but still offering a slight resistance to the teeth – and a rich sauce filling the little cells of the honeycomb. Perhaps Chinese butchers do not pre-cook their tripe for as long as others since normally one would only need about an hour before tripe is ready for the table. A good idea is to cook it ahead of time and then reheat it to allow for such discrepancies.
There are many delicious ways to consume it. In Chinatown at yum cha small dishes of tripe in a dark ginger sauce are a delight, much better than the rubbery, tasteless pork and cow’s tripe I tried in China itself. Most older Australians love it in an onion and parsley sauce, despite Stephanie Alexander’s describing this, in The Cook’s Companion, as ‘probably the worst way to serve tripe in the entire world.’ In my opinion, creamy white sauces have the advantage of providing a discrete disguise for those who do not like to think too much about what they are eating. My sister recommends a mushroom sauce – as does Dame Mary Gilmore in the Worker Cookbook – while Robin Howe’s Cooking from the Commonwealth gives a luxurious Tripe with Oysters, and both of these I can heartily recommend. Another Aussie method was that employed when the cattle stations of the outback ran on cheap Aboriginal labour. Bill Harney, in his cookbook, describes how the Aboriginal women would collect the tripe from the killing yards, slash it open, knock the half-digested grass out against a post, wash it and then cook it slowly in a ground oven – the true Australian style. They considered it a great delicacy and despised stewed tripe as not having ‘the real flavour about it.’ We have much to learn from our Indigenous cooks.
February 2020
Outdoor Dining: Reinventing Old Rituals
I was reminded recently of the importance of outdoor eating in Australia when viewing the magnificent Arthur Streeton retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In fact, two paintings served as a reminder: one of the stereotypical bushman cooking his evening repast in a blackened billy over the campfire, and the other of Sir Arthur and Lady Streeton taking tea in their Toorak garden, waited on hand and foot by a maid in white apron and frilly cap. (Not all artists starve in garrets.) As the exhibition curator noted, the image of the bushman was probably already becoming out of date when Streeton painted it in 1880, a myth of the past, of how Australia was ‘settled’, how the land was won. The painting’s title alone – ‘Settler’s Camp’ – invokes those myths, that Australia was not settled until the Whiteman came, a view that ignored both women and the original inhabitants. To see colonial paintings of Aboriginal people dining outdoors one must go back to the images of an earlier era, to the works of Joseph Lycett, for example, where the obvious presence of the First Nations, living and cooking in their identified territories, was impossible to ignore. In Streeton’s time, those who had settled the land for tens of thousands of years had been relegated to the fringes and were erroneously regarded as a ‘dying race’, their campfires almost extinguished. Yet it is to them that we in modern Australia, and the bush men and women of the colonial age, owe the great Australian tradition of al fresco dining, whether this be the picnic, the barbie, lunch on the verandah or the campfire meal.
During these strange days of Covid, outdoor dining has received a boost from the discovery that the virus is less contagious out than indoors. Small tables and chairs have been squeezed onto Sydney’s narrow footpaths by many inner-city restaurants, and a delightful phenomenon has arisen in our parks and harbour vantage points whereby couples or friends can book an evening meal en plein air. Rugs and cushions are supplied for comfort, candles and flowers for romance, and a sophisticated menu of choice. How lovely it is to see old ways reborn.
December 2020
Christmas Cheer: Tradition and Transformation
As family and friends gather to celebrate Christmas – albeit in smaller numbers than customary, due to the virus still lurking – we again consider what to put on the table on a day that often ends up being a ‘scorcher’. This question is usually posed as a pair of contrasting opposites: traditional versus modern? I must say that I enjoyed both my Christmas dinners. Firstly, a traditional Estonian dinner at a friend’s home on Christmas Eve, with roast duck, home-made barley-and-pork White Sausages, sauerkraut with roast pork, baked vegetables, and the famous Rosolje – a salad of potatoes and beetroot, piquant with chopped herring and dill pickles, and enriched with hard-boiled eggs and a dressing of sour cream – ‘explosively crimson’, one commentator has called it. This hot dinner was followed by a simple but satisfying Roosamanne, a pink semolina flummery with a fruity flavour – a traditional party food, my friend explained. The following midday, a cousin and I sat down to a magnificent spread at my sister’s house: cold roast beef and pork, glazed picnic shoulder ham – a sweeter cut than the leg – accompanied by home-made bread rolls, beautifully prepared salads and condiments. Since my sister is the best pudding maker that I have ever known, a Christmas Pudding naturally followed, with home-made vanilla ice-cream as a suitable summer accompaniment. Nibbles included cherries, chocolate ginger, rocky road, dried figs and muscatels, and glacé and marzipan fruits. Home-made lemon sodas refreshed us and a cup of tea helped digestion after.
What these dinners have to say is that tradition still has a vital role to play with the most important meal in the Christian calendar, whether one chooses hot or cold. Without tradition, in a land of plenty, the meal could be just any meal, from any occasion in the year. Since modern Australia was founded, Australians have probably always mixed tradition with local adaptations when celebrating the major festivals. For example, Victorian colonist Katherine Kirkland enjoyed a New Year’s Day dinner in 1841 which consisted of kangaroo soup, stuffed roast turkey, a boiled leg of mutton, a carrot pie, potatoes and green peas, plum pudding and strawberry tart with cream – surely a mix of local foods with the traditions of the Old Country.
Not all our customs come from Europe. Certainly, the crystallized ginger in my Christmas Cake and the chocolate ginger that is always a part of Christmas dinner in our family are a reminder of the Chinese market gardeners that have kept many Australians in fresh fruit and vegies since colonial times. Historian Patsy Adam-Smith, in her autobiography Hear the Train Blow, recalled with gratitude the Chinese greengrocer Charlie’s gift of fresh produce and a jar of ginger in syrup one Christmas during the Great Depression when the family had fallen on hard times. In addition to the ginger was a big watermelon. These, too, feature at many an Australian Christmas party and picnic, and this year the finale of my Boxing Day dinner at friends’, but in the more elaborate incarnation of a Watermelon Cake: with layers of fresh melon, sponge cake and cream, another reworking of the old rituals.
September 2020
Crowns of Saintly Glory for Corona
It all began with a family conversation at the beginning of the year about Gâteau St Honoré, named in honour of the patron saint of bakers and pastry cooks. Invented in 1846 by Monsieur Chiboust, who operated his pâtisserie near the Palais-Royal on the fashionable Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, it consists of a round of rich shortcrust pastry (pâté brisée) topped with Crème St Honoré – pastry cream lightened with beaten egg whites and set with a little gelatine – encircled with a crown of toffee-coated choux balls, and decorated with glacé fruit or berries. The choux balls are also filled with the Crème, or with Chantilly cream. With its two pastries, pastry cream, caramelized sugar coating and assembly, it is a feat rarely attempted by home cooks. My first experience of it was many years ago when my dear friend Anne whipped one up and, having succeeded spectacularly, has never attempted it since, preferring instead to rest on her laurels. The second time was this year when cousin Helen, privy to the earlier conversation, ordered a magnificent one for my birthday dinner from La Renaissance French pâtisserie in Sydney’s Rocks. I returned the compliment by making one for her birthday in September. A good year for some treats, and what better year than this – with so many activities cancelled – to be trying something complex and time-consuming.
For those who have never experienced it, a glimpse might be had in that highly enjoyable film marketed in the English-speaking world as Haute Cuisine – original French title Les Saveurs du Palais, the flavours of the Palace. The film is based on the real-life story of Périgord cook Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, recruited as personal chef to President François Mitterand, tired of the over-elaborate cuisine dished up to him at the Élysée Palace. One of the many culinary highlights of the film is a Gâteau St Honoré prepared according to her grandmother’s slightly simplified recipe, omitting the shortcrust and replacing it with a choux base, and using Chantilly cream. Perhaps, for my next attempt, I will follow this model.
But who was St Honoré? And how did he become the patron saint of bakers and pastry cooks? St Honoré’s association with bakery began during his life. When he was proclaimed Bishop of Amiens, his astonished nursemaid, who had been baking bread at the time, said that she would only believe it if the wooden baker’s peel she was using to place the loaves in the oven put down roots: so it did when planted in the ground, becoming a mulberry tree. Following his death millers and bakers miraculously avoided natural disasters, thanks to his intervention, and his feast day is celebrated with a festival of bread in Paris. He is often depicted with a baker’s peel, or holding a host of the Eucharist above his head.
St Elizabeth of Hungary is also associated with bakers since she gave bread to the poor. The Miracle of the Roses tells of how loaves of bread concealed under her cloak turned to white and red roses when she was challenged to reveal what she was hiding.
Then there is the patron saint of cooks St Lawrence. His martyrdom involved a good roasting on a large gridiron over hot coals, which is why he is often portrayed holding a metal grill. His saintly form was done on both sides since, when one side was toasted, he is said to have requested his tormentors to turn him over. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any dishes named in his or St Elizabeth’s honour.
And what of Australia’s own saint, Mary MacKillop? She has a rose named after her, but no culinary homage, an oversight, surely. A grand gateau with passionfruit filling, perhaps, or maybe a humbler dish, to remind us of the poor whom she spent her life serving? A project for the future.
July 2020
Surviving Lockdown the Healthy Way
Everyone has had their strategies for surviving, if not revelling in lockdown. For the inventive cook this has involved adapting some tried and true recipes to the ingredients to hand, particularly in the early days of empty shelves. Unable to buy wholemeal flour for several months, I found recipes for Digestives combining wholemeal and oatmeal by Margaret Fulton and New Zealand’s Aunt Daisy amenable to oatmeal only. Rolled oats – a great Antipodean favourite – have remained permanently available throughout the pandemic and a whizz in the food-processor was sufficient to pulverize them to fine oatmeal, ready for mixing and baking – a somewhat richer product than the Scotch oatcake, with more butter, and eggs or milk to bind. Delicious plain or with a fine, naturally rinded Pyengana cheese from Tasmania – one of the best cheeses that Australia produces. These oaten digestives are reasonably healthy, given the much advertized benefits of the soluble fibre (beta-glucan), antioxidants (avenanthramides) and vitamins and minerals that are to be found in oats.
Healthier eating might well be one of the unexpected benefits of lockdown. Unable to dine out, and with many people on reduced incomes, home cooking has become the norm, generally with more vegetables than the restaurant and take-away trade often dishes up. For those with a garden, the vegie patch has achieved its greatest importance since the Great Depression; and we flat-dwellers have been grateful recipients from family members of home-grown snowpeas, rainbow beets, spinach, carrots, lettuces, ruby grapefruit, lemons, limes, etc.
Foraging is another avenue for those with the appropriate knowledge. Partial to wild greens, I have been feasting on sow thistles (Sonchus oleraceus) quite regularly, either gathered at a nearby reserve or flourishing in friends’ gardens, from which they have been weeded to the gratitude of the garden owner. Immersed in a bowl of water, rinsed and picked over, boiled for 20-30 minutes (or until the toughest stalks are soft), drained in a colander and excess water squeezed out with the back of a wooden spoon, and finally dressed with a little olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper, they are delicious as a hot vegetable (or as a salad in the summer months), and oh, so healthy! full of Vitamin C, calcium, potassium and iron. Yes, some of us are surviving quite well.
May 2020
Zooming along in 2020
With Australia still under the Corona cloud, foodies are having to make their own fun. While dealing even now with lacunae on the supermarket shelves (what has happened to all the wholemeal flour?), marvellous compensations have come our way in the form of free conferencing platforms, like Zoom, to spread conviviality in these days of dining alone. Zoom dinners have become a feature of 2020, and I have been enjoying Corona High Teas with some friends each month of lockdown, thanks again to Zoom. Not without its challenges – what to do with a whole batch of scones or a large cake – yet it is an excuse to get out the best bone china, dress the table in a hand-embroidered cloth and bake some treats.
We share what we have prepared in a ‘show and tell’, savouring the others’ achievements in our imaginations via our eyes and ears while we consume our own delicacies. So far our two high teas have included a variety of sandwiches, sultana scones and Flo’s pumpkin scones (both distinctly Aussie inventions), hot cross buns, almond and coconut bickies, digestives with cheese, honey jumbles, ginger cake (as served to Prince Charles on a visit to the Buderim ginger factory), wholemeal pancakes with honey, Albury Feather Cakes, a delicious Regatta Fruit Cake, a baked custard, fruit slice, zucchini fritters, and a tomato and orange salad. Not bad going for four or five people. We will see what next month’s attack on our waistlines brings.
Another delightful, and completely virtual, food experience was this month revisiting the Oscar-winning Danish film Babette’s Feast, thanks to Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts’ subscription to the Beamafilm online library. Julian Baggini, in The Guardian, describes it as the ‘ultimate lockdown movie’, and it is reputably Pope Francis’ favourite film. In return for the shelter given her by two maiden ladies for fourteen years, Babette puts on a ‘real French dinner’ for the village: turtle soup (‘Real turtle soup’, remarks the General); Blinis Demidoff, with caviar and sour cream; Cailles en Sarcophage (quails stuffed with pâté de fois gras and truffles in pastry cases); Belgian endive salad; Savarin au Rhum; cheeses and exotic fruits; and coffee; all accompanied by vintage wines.
I wonder what would be a ‘real Australian dinner’, in similar style? Perhaps it would begin with a Bêche-de-Mer Soup, such as distinguished colonial hotelier Hannah Maclurcan describes in her 1890s cookbook; followed by our superb Sydney Rock Oysters; Kangaroo Tail Aboriginal Style or Baked Lamb; pumpkin, buttered chokos and warrigal greens; tropical fruit; obviously a Pavlova; with wattle seed beverage to finish. An idea for a Zoom dinner.
March 2020
Corona Cookery and the Blessings of a Bread Machine
How unpredictable is the life of the cook! A calendar crammed with culinary divertissements was quickly whittled away as the seriousness of the new Corona Virus Pandemic hit – a big fat cross through every single engagement from mid-March on.
Not to be deterred – before things got really bad – an artist friend alighted on my doorstep one Sunday and we went for a stroll by less frequented paths to Kurraba Point, whose name, incidentally, in Biyal Biyal (the Sydney Aboriginal language), means the prong of a fishing spear. The weather was perfect and the scenery such as only Sydney Harbour can turn on, its beauty in strange contrast to the human suffering being enacted throughout Australia and the world. Armed with our sketch pads and – to avoid contamination – our own lunches, we kept a safe distance all the way, nor hugged or kissed at greeting or farewell. When Jan came back to my place for a cuppa, again an extra particularity of hygiene: a separate milk jug each, and tongs with which I served the Ginger Biscuits, a great standby from my mother’s favourite bickie book, The Australian Women’s Weekly 100 Delicious Biscuits and Slices. They had been removed from their baking trays by a spatula and not touched by human hand since the raw dough went into the oven. An eyrie business this ‘social’ distancing, for us social beings.
Fortunately, like most bakers, the cupboard was reasonably stocked with flour, sugar, etc., for the supermarket shelves were rapidly denuded. The sudden absence of dark brown sugar and bread-making flour made me scratch my head: Who was doing all this baking? With restaurants and cafés closed, except for take-aways, everyone had to become a cook or starve. While some radio commentators swapped tips on how to make bread by hand, a friend emailed to ask if self-raising flour would be OK in Anzac Bickies since she had run out of plain. (Yes, why not?) In this time of trial, blessed are those with cookery skills for they shall be filled.
Another blessing is a bread-machine. My sturdy Panasonic was a gift from my Mum many years ago. It turns out a fragrant, crusty loaf every time, or the raw dough to make Hot Cross Buns, a Chelsea Bun, or whatever. Some of those in happy possession of such a device might not be aware of the fascinating history of its development, detailed in Nonaka and Takeuchi’s classic The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Since I have given away my copy and most libraries are shut for the duration, I will try to recall the details of this feat of Japanese ingenuity as best I can. It is an illustration that not all knowledge is written down: much is contained unarticulated in the minds, or even the practised hands and bodies of experts. The authors narrate the first unsuccessful attempts at developing a bread-machine by Matsushita – the company behind Panasonic: it mixed, it rose, it baked, but it did not produce a good loaf. The bread was without savour: it was not ‘tasty’. In Japan, at that period, there was a certain chef working at one of the top hotels who was famous for creating ‘tasty’ bread. One of the members of the development team volunteered to go and observe carefully what he did: she noted that, in addition to the stated procedure, the chef gave the dough a certain twist and stretch. Excited, she rushed back with the news: the challenge now was how to get the bread machine to replicate this movement. If you look at the pan in which your bread is made, you will notice two vertical grooves which indent into the dough and alter its movement during kneading: these were Matsushita’s solution. Blessed are the home breadmakers, but also those whose pursuit of excellence produced the bread machine to help us in these and better times.
January 2020
Australian Chinese Restaurants in Constancy and Flux
At this season – Chinese New Year – we are reminded of Australia’s debt to our Chinese cooks for many good dining experiences: beginning with the treat of a meal out at the local suburban Chinese (= Cantonese) restaurant when I was a child, to the discovery of the more exotic delights of Chinatown and yum cha in my late teens and early twenties, to nowadays the sophisticated flavours and techniques of every region in China. While others rave about French, Thai or whatever, I must declare a preference (after Australian cookery) for Chinese, truly one of the great food traditions.
A reminder of the infinite care which often goes into the dishes sent to table came towards the end of last year at a workshop hosted by Beijing Impression, a restaurant in Sydney’s Chinatown. Demonstration, followed by consumption, was given of three typical dishes available in the capital: Kungfu Deep Fried Meatballs, Braised Prawns (Shandong style) and the two-century old sweet Kungfu Non-Sticky – a yolk-enriched disc of a pudding, looking for all the world like a golden moon, garnished with dragon fruit and mango. The first of these will illustrate my point about culinary skill and dedication: to make the meatballs, a perfect layering of belly pork and fat was sliced and minced by hand for two hours – no machines – until the texture was entirely glutinous, then flavoured with shallots, ginger, msg and salt, wrapped in ‘starch onto starch’ (dustings of cornflour) to allow for crispness, with a final application of sesame oil and sesame seeds. Timing and management of temperature was critical: 3-5 minutes in the fridge to firm; fried first at 40-50°C increased to 70-80° after 1-2 minutes; and then deep-fried a second time to remove excess oil at 100-120°. Bright in colour, crusty outside, melt-in-the-mouth inside, served simply with sweet chilli sauce and black pepper, a memorable encounter.
Similarly superb food appeared at my Chinese New Year Banquet at Marigold Restaurant, like the Jumbo Prawns with Salted Egg Yolk, from the heads of which, standing upright like so many whiskery soldiers at attention, we all duly scraped out and savoured some of the innards with our chopsticks.
Despite these twenty-first century wonders, I still hanker after the good old Cantonese delights which laid the foundations of all this, and whose blend of sweet fruit and savoury flesh matched so well the palate of Australians brought up on sweet curries, lamb with mint sauce, baked dinners with sweet potatoes, and the cold meat and chutney which inevitably followed the next day. Sweet and Sour Pork (all the better for some Golden Circle pineapple chunks), Sweet and Sour Fish, Chicken and Almonds or Cashews, Sweet Corn Soup, and Honey King Prawns remain eternal favourites of many Aussies like myself. Despite the label of ‘Chinese’, there has always been a certain Antipodean distinctiveness: as well as the sweet notes, loads more beef than would ever be seen in China, showing the integration and acceptance of outside traditions with the local. My next celebration will be at a perennial suburban favourite, Lee’s Fortuna Court, where the old and new sit happily and unashamedly side by side.
November 2019
Kiwi or Kangaroo? Fish or Frog?
Travelling to Aotearoa in October for a wedding on the Canterbury Plains of the South Island led me inevitably to consider the cookery of our two nations.
At first glance many similarities stand out. Lamb chops, meat pies, sponge cakes, Pavlovas, Anzac biscuits, scones and pikelets are equally at home on both sides of the Tasman, and of course those great Australian inventions: Lamingtons, nienish tarts and jaffas. Even the way we talk about our cookery seems to suffer the same affliction: what Jane Hingston, author of The ABC of Kiwi Food, calls the ‘self-deprecating way’ in which New Zealanders insist, or used to insist, that there was no real Kiwi cuisine, is matched in Australia by ‘cultural cringe’, still very much alive.
There are differences, too, but quite a few are fairly subtle and possibly easy to overlook. My lamb chops at the post-wedding barbecue came with tender slices of venison, reared on the farm of the bridegroom’s uncle. The gem irons in the old wares shop in Ashburton had rectangular moulds, not the spherical gem scones that we are used to. Then there are the Belgian Biscuits so beloved of New Zealanders – large spiced bickies sandwiched together with raspberry jam and iced – a relic of World War I cookery, as is the Belgian Bun that crops up from time to time in Australian cookbooks. (Both are delicious, ours a round of pastry filled with lemon cheese.)
However, if we search for more distinct traditions they are not hard to find: the Maori with their famous hangi, kumara, puha (sows’ thistle) and Maori Bread, and Aboriginal cooks with their ‘roo and emu, ground ovens and damper. Added to these are the vast differences in most native foods and, in modern times, the overlay of exotic foodstuffs, the tropical produce of Australia, and the kiwi fruit and tamarillo that have come to be identified with New Zealand.
On a more curious note are chocolate fish and frogs. Why Kiwis took up chocolate fish or when they first became popular is swathed in mystery, but they are certainly everywhere – at the dairy, supermarket and department store. A marshmallow middle (usually raspberry), the better brands like Queen Anne could give Australia’s frogs a run for their money. By contrast, the origin of chocolate frogs is well documented in Jill Robertson’s fascinating biography of Macpherson Robertson, MacRobertson: The Chocolate King. In 1930 one of Robertson’s young employees, Harry Melbourne, suggested the frog as a shape that would appeal to children for a new novelty line. Several years later it was renamed ‘Freddo’ after the foreman of the packing department Fred McLean, and history was made. Milk, two-tone or filled with strawberry or peppermint cream, Freddos have since been joined by Pink Lady’s Green Tree Frogs (milk chocolate) and Haigh’s frogs: milk or dark, plain or peppermint. A national addiction, surely.
September 2019
On Country Bakeries
Journeying through Kamilaroy, Wiradjuri and Ngemba lands in New South Wales in May and early June, naturally led me and my travelling companion Megan to try out some of the local bakeries. Regrettably not every town has one any more. I say ‘any more’ because I assume that, once upon a time, a bakery would have been as necessary as a butchery or grocery. The drought may be one reason for their decline – so many shops boarded up or for lease. Certainly competition from supermarkets has devastated many small providores, despite giving country people better access to fresh fruit and veg than ever before. And maybe the long hours that bakers are forced to work – getting up in the dark to manage the dough – may not appeal to youth looking for a living. The town of Nyngan had none. Molong had a sign ‘Baker Wanted’.
Where we did find one, the quality varied. Good baking, like all good cooking, needs inspiration and dedication. It didn’t have anything to do with the size of the place. Little Merriwa in the Upper Hunter has a superb bakery, which I can recommend to anyone travelling within cooee. Entering, you get a peek at the cooling racks through the door to the baker’s domain – a sure indication that it is all made on the premises – while in the shop you are presented with a staggering array of bread and fancy goods: Nienish tarts, Lamingtons, iced finger buns, sponges, macadamia slices with more nuts than you can poke a stick at, cheesecake …. and more.
Bread, the staff of life in a simpler age, is of course the raison d’être of any bakery. Despite decades of health messages about the superior value of wholemeal, the dominance of the white loaf continues in the Bush, begun when roller mills replaced stone-grinding in Australia from 1879. At least at Morrall’s, a Bourke institution since 1905, sour dough has joined the range. How good it was, too, to see bread that will always bring back memories of my childhood: the tank loaf of the local delivery man, with its ringed cylindrical form, and particularly the high-top, only ever found in the country when I was growing up, the upper crust burnt almost black for flavour. We bought a high-top, and delicious it was, almost good enough to overcome my prejudice against white bread. Some that was left over from the trip ended up in my freezer, to be later turned into the best bread-and-butter pudding I have ever made – something to do with the texture, the body of the loaf, so different from the pap of the manufacturers.
A Bee-sting was another enjoyment from Morrall’s, a honey-glazed, almond-strewn bun filled with custard. An inheritance from our German immigrants of the 1800s, it crops up sometimes in unlikely places, far from the Barossa and the Adelaide Hills where it rightly belongs. I have enjoyed it most northerly in Kowanyama, a remote Murri township on the Gulf side of Cape York. The bakery was established by the Aboriginal Shire Council to provide fresh, wholesome bread to a community which is largely cut off from the outside world for half the year during the Wet. Don, assisted by Allan and the local ladies, was in charge during my trips there, a master of bread, pies and pizza, as well as fancy goods. The Ned Kelly Pies – Don’s own invention – were great, as was the largest Bee-sting I have ever eaten. ‘The best baker in the Cape,’ was the pronouncement of the Flying Doctor pilot, waiting with me at the counter. Since then, Don and his wife Medelyn have set up shop at Dimbulah – lucky Tablelanders.
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Traditional Australian Cookery 