Cat on the Bench

Christmas x 4

Yes, four Christmases. It would have been five if my boss hadn’t cancelled the work Christmas party, or six if you include Christmas-eve beer and chips in Fed Square with the girlies. Perhaps the rise of obesity in Australia correlates with the increase in broken families and the consequential need for a plethora of Christmas events. Hmmm . . .

Christmas number 1 was a lunch at my dad’s place near Bendigo. The V-line train line to Bendigo has been out of operation for over a year now so visiting my father entails a four-hour tram, train, bus and car/taxi expedition. Our stepmother wanted everyone to bring something for the meal so my sis and I racked our brains for dishes that could withstand such a journey. I settled on the caramelised apple cake from The Paris Cookbook and Nigella’s chocolate macaroons. My sis had been out clubbing until six that morning, but had come home and set some balsamic-drizzled beetroots on to roast while she had a cat-nap. She brought these with an orange and a bag of baby spinach and made them into a gorgeous salad.

We started with little bowls of nibbly things – marinated octopus, dolmades, olives and the dregs of my bro’s birthday ham (he asked one parent for a ham for his birthday and the other for a knife, then proceeded to have a ham party for his mates). Next came baked trout rubbed with spices and stuffed with lime, my sis’s salad and a lettuce and tomato affair that my dad had made from his new vegie garden. We finished with coffee, cake and the macaroons. I had made the cake a few times before – it is mainly apple with a tiny bit of batter that has lots of raising agent in it so it sets more like an airy baked custard around the apple than a cake. Halfway through the cooking time, you pour a mixture of sugar, butter and egg over the top of the cake though which sets to a chewy caramel that offsets the tart apples.

I had been wanting to make Nigella’s macaroons ever since I had the amazing chocolate macaroons at Baker D Chirico on Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. I even bought an icing bag especially. My macaroons ended up a bit bigger than the little chocolate jewels I first tasted but they had the same chocolate intensity (I think because I used 70% chocolate for the insides and a good cocoa for the biscuits). I was a bit annoyed with Nigella because her recipe for ganache (to sandwich the biscuits together) made about three times too much, and was also very runny and difficult to work with. However, I realise now that when the recipe stated to “cool” the ganache, it meant to put it in the fridge until it is cold, and not just cool it to a point when you are able to touch and work with it. It solidifies as it cools and you can then spread it like butter, rather than trickle it like icing. I had forgotten to ice two of the biscuits and when I spread them with the cold ganache I got a lot more icing on the biscuit.

I had made chutney for everyone’s presents – chunky pear and walnut (from a Good Weekend recipe) and peach (from Stephanie). I didn’t have enough left over to keep test jars for myself but people have given me good reports so far.  My bro and his girlfriend had made zucchini pickle and mango chutney for everyone, so most people went home with at least two jars.  And my sis gave me a book of chutney recipes.

Christmas number two was a Thai restaurant in Chinatown with my mum and the siblings. It was standard Thai fare with prices reflective of our post-Christmas shopping bank balances.

Christmas number three was on Christmas morning with my mum. We were planning to have champagne and pastries on St Kilda beach but had forgotten to purchase either beforehand. I called around a few places but was told to either try Chinatown (been there, done that) or the hotels. The Prince were only serving for guests but the Hilton and the Sofitel were both offering their full breakfast buffet. My mum squealed with happiness when I suggested the Hilton. She told me about the last time that she had breakfast there: thirty years ago when she was handling the PR for the Moscow Circus’ Melbourne tour, there was a breakfast meeting at the Hilton to deal with the problem of the elephant trainer who was threatening to quit unless he got a pay rise!

It was $32 a head for the full Hilton buffet – unlimited coffee, eggs as you like them, bacon, hash browns, mushrooms, tomatoes, fruit salad, Bircher muesli, yoghurts, stewed fruits, nuts, toast, muffins, pastries, pancakes, waffles, cereals and even a juice machine where you could make your own fresh juice. Arguably a bit steep for breakfast but I reckon we ate our money’s worth (or at least drank it in coffee!).

Christmas number four was a late lunch on Christmas Day with N’s extended family in West Brunswick. I rode my bike their in an effort to speed digestion of breakfast. There were prawns (and spinach pie things for the vegetarians), cold turkey and cranberry, cold ham and mustard, potato salad, greek salad, tomato and mozzarella salad, cold roast vegetables with a mustard dressing and for dessert, N’s grandma’s famous Christmas pudding that she had been feeding with brandy since August. This came with a choice of ice cream, cream, brandy sauce or brandy custard (of which N’s little sis had all four).

I rode (slowly) home then collapsed with a Berocca and snuggled up with Nigel Slater’s new book The Kitchen Diaries, a present from my mum (which N had also bought me and hidden in his sock drawer for me to find on Christmas morning, but had to unwrap and return when he found out that my mum had bet him to it!).

Merry Christmas everyone!

Pre-festivities festivals and the quest for balance

The opposite of late-night study with a coffee plunger and a cat for company is open skies, crazy dancing, cold beer, happy people and a drumbeat.  Creek-swimming and pensive chats over cups of chai also don’t go astray.   

So what is a burnt-out student to do but take herself to a music festival? Or two.  One for each exam, she justifies, not excessive at all. Equilibrium requires it.  And it could have very easily been three if I had been sufficiently organised to get tickets to Meredith or sold my firstborn to join themfolks about to trek north for the superlative Woodford.

My chosen two were the three-day Folk Rhythm and Life festival in Eldorado, and the one-day Meredith spinoff Carpark Festival in Chinatown. They were very different and I’m not going to hide the fact that I far preferred the former.  The Carpark Festival had bigger acts (Sons and Daughters, The Kills and the Avalanches, although they didn’t really play anything special, just chucked on records and let their friends dance on the stage) but it lacked that escapist hedonistic merriment that, to me, maketh a good music festival.  You would have thought that everyone being crammed into a stinking hot carpark would have created some sense of togetherness through adversity but it just didn’t take off. 

And they were charging $5.50 for a VB (which for my English readers is a nasty nasty beer that makes urine smell like Chanel). Either the organisers were just sadists (there are perfectly acceptable beers available for the same price), or they were doing the Vice Magazine-esque (anti)-reasoning thing, i.e. “VB is a ‘don’t’.  If we say VB is a ‘do’, this differentiates us from the masses.  We are inherently different from the masses because we are painfully trendy Vice people.  Therefore, we will drink VB and of course the masses will want to follow us. Let them drink VB!”.  Similarly, the only food being sold on a stinking hot Melbourne afternoon was Polish sausages, casseroles and donuts. ?!?!?

Not wishing to partake in their culinary irony, we got passouts and went to the Lounge on Swanston Street for a jug instead, pausing on the way for spanokopitas from the Greek bakery on Lonsdale Street, and didn’t return until the sun and the filler acts had died down.

The Folk Rhythm and Life Festival, however, was bloody marvellous.  The music was great but there was no one particular act that I was going to be heartbroken about if a swim in the creek went longer than planned.  That said, my highlights were probably Those Bloody McKennas, Skin, Sophie Koh and Pablo Discobar.

The beer was good and fairly priced (Carlton, Guinness or Cascade), especially since N and I worked on the bar the first night and were given a weekend’s worth of drink cards for our efforts. It was too warm to eat much during the day but when the sun went down, I feasted on homemade samousas with tamarind chutney (which I sang the praises of to everyone who would listen until they sold out and I had to find another food sources), buttery cobs of corn, chai, a slice of a puckery rhubarb meringue cake, organic apricots and carrots, and a not-very-organic white bread bacon sandwich at 3am on Saturday night.

Bacon, beer, bass and a bit of a boogie: a recipe for balance.