Virgil Evetts

I think I got it from my mother, my soft spot for the underdog. She used to bring home every waif that crossed her path. There were down and out gurus, men who heard reedy voices from beyond, wayward teens, a woman who spoke in tongues and another who spoke to rocks. Mum never judged them, just listened, gave them a meal, a place to sleep and time to sort themselves out- which they very rarely did.  As I grew older, any wide-eyed fascination with these often self proclaimed ‘eccentrics’ waned. They took up space, they dressed funny and they talked a lot of nonsense. Today I can count on a closed fist the number of unfortunates to whom I’ve offered refuge. But, like mum, I do ache for the world- I just can’t be having mewling strangers in my space.  

So rather than offering refuge to lost souls, I find room in my pantry for the waif-like foodstuffs of the world. Food from, downtrodden places, from the ‘Axis of Evil’, from alleged hot beds of anti-American activity and from cruel and trigger-happy dictatorships. If Fox News says to fear them, I want to eat their food. I care not one fig for their politics and fisticuffs, but for the people we never see; the workaday Joes and Josies, for the food they eat, and whatever goods they send our way.

I seek out Iranian foodstuffs wherever possible,pashmak, pomegranate juice, fresh medjool dates, saffron and dried mulberries. Such wonderful things. I fear for this largely moderate and educated nation, with its vast and ancient cuisine. In fact, probably THE most ancient cuisine. But thanks to the dum-dum posturing of Iran’s piggy-eyed ,anorak loving president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  -a puppet to an extremist minority- Iran is now firmly in the sights of the ‘World Police’, and we know how that story inevitably ends. But even if you don’t care for the plight of the Persian people, at least seek out some of their fine food exports while you still can. Before the factories fall and the trade embargoes clamp down.

I have a big liberal soft spot for Indonesia too. The sprawling archipelago nation has become the black sheep of South East Asia since the undeniably terrible Bali bombings. But we cannot hold the actions of a few crazed and craven types (religious extremes of all persuasions attract lunatics like moths to a floodlight) against an entire people, and certainly not their foods. The Indonesian people are educated, family-focused, peaceful and largely very poor. Their cuisine is epic, intelligent and incredibly nuanced. It employs spices and technique not seen anywhere else. While, it does have similarities to Malaysian cooking, it lacks most of the Chinese, Indian and European influence and as such is perhaps the most pristine and intact in the region. I love Indonesian food and will always support Indonesian restaurants- for both the food, and to express some sort of solidarity. Actual Indonesian produce is pretty hard to come by in New Zealand- mostly because of the fairly small migrant community here than anything else, but high quality belacan (shrimp paste) and the chunky and flavoursome local prawn crackers, (vastly superior to the multi coloured Chinese version) are not too hard to find. Kopiko coffee caramels are a relic of colonial Dutch rule and are probably the country’s best known edible export, and for good reason too- they’re delicious.

And just this week, I discovered (in the ever wonderfulTrade-Aid), to my delight, Palestinian couscous. Take that, Israeli couscous!  I don’t for a moment think Palestine is blameless in THAT struggle, but the vast majority of its people certainly are. Blame their ancestors, Blame the League of Nations, blame Israel or whoever but there is no denying the average Palestinian has a harder lot than pretty much anyone else in the Arab world (ok except women, adulaters’ and gays). They don’t have oil to pay their bills or buy friends and their well connected neighbours hate them with a very ancient passion. For the ordinary Palestinian, I feel very sorry indeed. So of course I had to buy the couscous, and yes mostly because of bleeding heart liberalism. I know. But it turned out to be the best couscous I’ve ever eaten. Hand on bleeding heart.  Each rough textured, hand-rolled grain remains distinct from the rest, and it has real flavour, one of flour, wheat and grainy goodness.  A far cry indeed from the uniform factory made product seen in supermarkets. Proceeds go to a Palestinian women’s workers co-op too, which is just about more than my sense of soppy liberalism can handle…

A common theme I find with foodstuffs from all of these maligned and mistrusted places is that they’re usually really good. I’ve formed a theory about this too. They are not made to meet the exacting standards of western supermarket buyers or bland, homogenised tastes and they are largely made in heavily trade-sanctioned nations, which have little to no access to up to date food processing equipment and additives. In a funny sense, western politicking may well have helped preserve their cuisines and food traditions. Not sure how I really feel about this. Don’t these people have the same right to ruin their health, sully their food and abandon their traditions like all the rest of us???

You have to be careful though. Supporting goods from truly corrupt nations can be an empty and even detrimental gesture. Most of what you spend could end up in the pocket of some malignant self-decorated general. Burma (Never Myanmar!!!) springs to mind. The same would apply to North Korean goods too, if you could find any. Fortunately trade sanctions and the general lack of anything to eat their takes care of that. I’m sure Dear Leaders family had access to some pretty fine kimchi though.

But isn’t this all very tokenistic and shallow? Assuredly.  It’s only food after all. But through the food of supposed villains, of terrorists and of so called rogue nations, we are confronted with the obvious truth. People are people. Some are good, some are bad, but most are just human. A little good, a little bad, plodding through another day and looking forward to dinner.

Virgil Evetts

Don’t get me wrong, I love living in New Zealand. I love the lifestyle, the climate (well, maybe not always) and I love the quality of our local produce. But a few days in Sydney last week reminded me that, well we’re not quite as up with it in this latter regard as we might like to think.

I was over there largely on daddy-duties while my best beloved was checking in with her head office, and as such had a lot of time on my hands with no set plans.  Somewhat flummoxed by the time difference, Olive resumed napping twice a day (which she stopped doing months ago). She prefers to sleep in her buggy when she’s with me, so we trawled the city streets and suburbs, via Sydney’s enviably fine rail network. I took in Asian supermarkets, regular supermarkets, specialist delis, fruit shops, and of course the unmissable David Jones food hall. Everywhere I went I found things unseen in Auckland. Lovely, delectable things, which with every mouthful I knew I would not taste again until the next trip. Things to delight and frustrate.

So here are five things food I adore, which are available across the ditch but not as of yet, in New Zealand

Finger Limes

These small, pendulous citrus are Australian natives and are not thus far grown (commercially) anywhere else. But stay tuned. Nothing this good can be kept secret for long.  The flesh of these fruit (which comes in a wide range of colours and flavours within the same species) is composed entirely of caviar-like juice capsules, each tightly gravid with sharp, flavoursome juice. Some taste limey, others more like sour blood orange, and still others like grapefruit. Used as a dressing/garnish for salads and with fried foods, the tiny spheres are quite transformative, bringing remarkable texture, flavour piquancy and fragrance.  They are by far the most exciting ‘new’ food I’ve tried in a long, long time- even though they’ve existed in Australia for millions of years. Not only are these not available in New Zealand, they’re not even approved for entry. Boo!

Black Corinth Grapes (Currant Grapes)

I’ve written before about my love of currants, especially in old fashioned baked goods like rock cakes.  And that was even before I’d tried the fresh, sun-ripened grapes they start off as. These tiny, seedless grapes are chin-drippingly juicy and honey-sweet with a gorgeous, musky mellow flavour. Olive and I engulfed great handfuls of them on the train ride home and went back (some 40 minutes away by train) the next day for more.

Although my research suggests currants were grown in New Zealand many decades back, they appear to have entirely vanished. It’s relatively straight forward for commercial grape growers to import grafting material, and due to the extreme (and entirely warranted) fashionability of fresh currants overseas, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw them growing here sooner or later.  Not that we have much of table grape industry here – thank YOU very much California and Chile.

David Jones Food Hall

We have some fine food emporiums In New Zealand, make no mistake. But none can touch the grandeur and breadth of David Jones. Clearly modelled on the equivalent department at Harrods (you know, in London), it is only slightly less comprehensive and certainly carries some of the best looking and most exclusive foods you will ever see. Each piece of fruit appears to be hand selected (and probably was), the seafood quite impossibly fresh, and the ranges of meat and cheese nothing short of breathtaking.  As much as anything this place speaks volumes of the wealth and dazzling ethnic diversity of Sydney. As it stands right now, such a place could not exist in New Zealand. There simply aren’t enough of us – privileged or otherwise – and our culinary points of reference are too narrow or retrograde.

Honey Gold Mangoes

I thought I had Aussie mangoes sussed. Yes I know, they grow some good ones – Kensington Pride: very nice; ditto the Kietts. Always better than anything from South or Central America  but none to match those of South East Asia.

Then I tasted Honey Gold. This uniquely Australian cultivar was found as a chance seedling in a Queensland orchard about 15 years ago, and has since captured the taste buds of fruit lovers, growers and retailers alike. The fruit arrives off the tree like a natural mango smoothie. It lacks bothersome mango fibre, and presents a perfect balance of sweetness, acid and rich, spicy flavour all bound up in a near-liquid, somehow creamy flesh.

Honey Golds have, I think, spoiled me for all other mangoes. They’re widely available in Aus from late November into March, and the first to arrive each year are much fought over, fetching outlandish prices at auction. These are imported into New Zealand but only after they’ve been irradiated as per the biosecurity entry requirements for Australian mangoes. Irradiation, while a necessary evil, is still an evil none-the less. It alters texture and leaves fruit tasting cooked and somewhat muted. In my humble estimation, all irradiated fruit is a waste of time- and money

Vietnamese Food

Yes, we can get this here too, but nothing like the scale seen in of Sydney. Thanks to a sizeable and long established Vietnamese community, restaurants of all sizes and price ranges can be found all over the city. An indication of this ubiquity is the cuisine’s standard inclusion amongst offerings of food halls in all the mainstream malls.

My favourite Vietnamese find was the very original Taste Baguette chain. This is a bit like a Vietnamese version of Subway, but needless to say much better.  Serving little more than (very good) coffee and banh mi thit –  probably Vietnam’s most beloved meal on the go and a perfect hybrid of Vietnamese flavours and French colonial influence. Super crunchy baguettes (thanks to addition of some rice flour) are filled with charcoal-grilled meats marinated in lemon grass, chilli, ginger, fish sauce and soy, topped with great fists-full of fresh coriander, spring onion, green papaya and lime juice. The result is extraordinary. Bar-none the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten and at a mere $7 for a 12-inch job, the best value lunch I found too.

There were other things too:

Korean dried persimmons, soft like fudge and dusty with their own natural sugars; street-side roti vendors to rival the best in Malaysia; tiny, sweet ‘paradise pears’; and startlingly cheap Italian cheese…

I’ll be back over there again in a month or two, and undoubtedly I’ll find more to delight and frustrate.

I suppose there is a bit of a ‘grass is always greener’ element to my experiences, or maybe just a outing of the green eyed monster, but it is a reminder that while we are lucky to live where do, and very well fed to boot, our tiny population, with its limited means and somewhat narrow tastes does come at a price.

BTW: Olive (18 months now somehow!) wanted you to know that her favourite things in Sydney were the trains and shouting at the fruit-bats in the botanical gardens. She maintains however that these were cats. With wings.

Virgil Evetts

Like a lot children, back in the day I was an imp around fire. I just loved burning stuff, and along with a like-minded friend, even volunteered for bin duty at primary school as a means of gaining access the incinerator. Oh the fun we had, and the things we burned! It came to an abrupt and detention-laden end though, when said friend managed to ignite one of his shoes. This would have been fine if he hadn’t been wearing the shoe at the time and run screaming to a duty teacher in a cloud of acrid black smoke. I was informed by Mrs Crabbe (the comically named then Head Mistress) that I had ‘really cooked my goose’. Little did she know that I’d grow up to cook quite a few geese…

So I stopped burning stuff and found other ways to misbehave.

I think everyone has fire bug tendencies. How else do we explain the ubiquity of BBQ? Shortly after we bought our house, I wasted no time in purchasing a gas BBQ. It hadn’t been an option at the place we’d been renting, so by the time we moved in, I was hanging out to singe some meat. It was great too, at first. BBQs became a bi-weekly thing during that first summer. I grilled whole fish, butterflied chickens, indulged in all manner of skewered morsels and discovered the joys of flame grilled vegetables.  

But as much as I revelled in all of this- the process and results, I found it somehow lacking, good but never great. It just wasn’t quite the BBQ flavour of my mind’s eye.  So my interest waned. The rain cover came off less and less often and eventually, a couple of season’s back- it stopped coming off altogether.

I’d meant to do something about this- splash out on something bigger, better and crippling pricey, but life got in the way. I was made redundant from my day job and launched myself into the peaks and troughs of freelance writing. And then Olive (my daughter) arrived, bulldozing all other priorities into triviality as children are wont to do…

But then a couple of months back I happened upon a FaceBook posting from Barry Wah Lee (of Wah Lee, the great and ancient Chinese emporium in Auckland ) advertising  ‘stick-food Hibachis’ (pictured in action above). A hibachi- as if you didn’t know- is a Japanese firebox, designed for tabletop charcoal grilling. Take note: charcoal. Not gas. The version in question is only really a hibachi in the loosest sense of the word as it isn’t suitable for indoor use and has been specifically designed  for satay grilling. These long, narrow metal troughs are a common site on street corners all over South East Asia, and the  eye-stinging, delicious smoke they produce is a fond memory of many a traveller.

So I shelled out a ridiculously modest $45 for the 60cmX15cm box, bought a bag of charcoal, marinated some free-range pork strips and promptly fell wildly in love again with flame, smoke and the breezy delights of outdoor cooking

It seems too obvious, but charcoal is the secret ingredient in the very best BBQ food.  Charcoal produces richly flavoursome smoke and intense, consistent heat. Gas does neither.

As a fue,l charcoal is not as cheap as gas, but it is much safer to use. It cannot leak, explode or silently asphyxiate. To prime it for cooking you need only a splash of methylated spirit, a match and a spare 10 minutes for the flames to die down and the heat to build up.  With a full load of charcoal the satay grill will burn furiously for up to 90 minutes, cooking more satay than any family could reasonably consume. I hear satay parties are all the rage in the States right now…

Oh and the flavour- If you’ve been raised or weaned onto gas in recent decades, the flavour of real charcoal-grilled food will knock you sideways.  It’s as different to gas-grilled as margarine is to butter

If satay isn’t your thing (which is frankly, quite odd), one of those old fashioned tripod BBQs will do. You don’t even need to buy one, just take a cruise around your neighbourhood during the next inorganic collection.  I guarantee you’ll find one, or several. Take comfort while furtively stuffing it into your boot, that it will yield far superior results to whatever hooded chrome behemoth has replaced it.

Virgil Evetts

We’ve talked about it for years and have at last come to a family consensus:  no gifts for grownups anymore. Nothing for me, nothing for her, nowt for Mum or Dad, nor in-laws, or friends.  The wee ones won’t miss out, of course, but for the rest of us, nada. And might I say a resounding thank God for that!  I don’t mean to sound doer and miserly, but enough with the cult of ‘stuff’.

What do any of us (you included) really Need? Compared to the vast majority of people who have ever lived, we here in lovely, far New Zealand, live it up like royalty. Even the most underprivileged families (of which there many) are infinitely better off than their counterparts in the developing world. Cold comfort, I know, but my point is that none of us here really knows what need is, or at least we should not need to know…

We know a lot about Want though. Not content with peace and plenty, we still Want the world. Few of us here need ever worry about where the next meal will come from, or if our children will survive the winter – so instead, we worry about which brand of kitchen mixer is best, who makes the best ciabatta and if it’s fair of Sky to charge extra for SoHo (probably not, but totally worth it BTW). We have all we actually need, now we just Want distractions.  And with that line of vulgarity in mind, coupled with a hereditary loathing of shopping, my family is quite gleefully foregoing gifts, for all but the bairns from here on in.

However, it’s still Christmas, and as such we need to eat a lot of very fine things.  Yes, perhaps this undermines our anti-consumerist stance, but you know what? I don’t care.  Food matters a great deal in my family, and as a motley crew of mostly atheists, Christmas is all about family to us. We show our love through our cooking; it’s our common ground and our strongest thread.  Food on the big day –as a social glue and gesture of affection – matters more to us than any official ‘reason for the season’.

It turns out too, that without the stress and financial burden of gift shopping, the whole menu design process is a genuine delight. We’ve agreed on a streamlined list of things we love, but haven’t (yet) lost our heads.

Although we’ve dispensed with turkeys and salmon this year in favour only ham, it is truly a princely piece.  The huge, mahogany-toned free range half buttock is occupying a large portion of my fridge at present, taunting me with its potential.  It shall be succulent, sweet, sticky and fine. I’m consumed by thoughts of so many gluey, singed chef’s perks…

There will be salads too,  but only a brace this year (rather than our usual sprawling ensemble), one of roast vegetables slicked with homemade pesto and fresh mayonnaise, the other,  Cos lettuce with a fiercely garlic-laden vinaigrette and oven-baked sour dough croutons.  Dessert is to be but one vast tiramisu. Handmade, naturally, and sodden with marsala and real espresso. Just as it should be.

There will be wine, but not too much. Diurnal drunkenness just isn’t pretty, nor nocturnal either for that matter.  

And then there are all those finishing touches: the sweet little morsels of tradition; mince pies (with no lack of suet and a great deal of brandy butter), stollen, panetonne, some single serve trifles. perhaps. Making these things puts me more in mind and spirit of Christmas than any amount of tree decorating.  Really must get on to the tree though…

I’m sure someone will bring chocolates, cherries, fresh berries and cream. Someone always does. We’ll eat, laugh, talk, snooze, rouse and start again. It will be a languid affair and people will come and go as-and-when they please. No rules, no formality.

In the evening, when everyone has drifted off, we’ll wander down to the Village, and soak up the strange feeling of desolation that settles over shopping places during the holidays.

Altogether Bliss. A Christmas unsullied by things. Just great food, great company and a leisurely pace. I really can’t wait.

Happy Christmas to you all, however you choose to do it.

PS

Feel free to drop by my Facebook page over the holidays to see what I’ve been up to on the food, gardening and writing front. Chances are, too much, quite a bit and not enough- in that order.