Fig-ure it out
Virgil Evetts

Supermarkets and high street fruiters like to perpetuate a myth that all the best fruit comes out in summer.  But we know better.  Those of us who truly live by our stomachs and taste buds that is, know that, apart from a few cherries, berries and early stone fruit, the very best pluckable eating is to be had in autumn.  Apples, quinces, pears, grapes, late peaches,  and most importantly for the sake of this week’s column and my own predilections, figs, all reach their sugary, sensuous best when the days start to shorten and the leaves start to curl.

Being a bit of a bit of miserable bugger, I can usually find something to complain about with even the very best foods, but with figs I’m left scratching the grumbling recesses of my head and drawing blanks. The fig is a faultless fruit.

So maybe I’m being a bit gushy.  Not everyone is fig-mad, but I’ve always acted like a one man fig marketing board and have every intension of treating the next 1000 words or so as one giant sales pitch.  Just you see if I don’t win you over.

The fig, or Ficus carica, has figured into the human diet since prehistoric times. It was one of the plants that, through its easy going ways and delicious rewards, persuaded our ancestors to give up the whole nomadic thing, settle-down on the banks of the Euphrates  and invent the lifestyle block. It’s easy to see the attraction to the agricultural virgin – figs grow almost effortlessly from cuttings (break-off twig, shove it in the ground), they are famously drought tolerant, criminally delicious, are packed full of dietary fibre and are a veritable cocktail of vitamins and anti-oxidants.  So, not only do they taste good, they make you feel good too.  Personally, I wouldn’t care if they were composed of pure fat and caused rectal leakage; I’d still wolf them down at every opportunity.

Botanical stuff

The fig family is enormous and diverse, with members spread far and wide around the globe- mulberries, breadfruit, jack fruit, noni – and that’s just a small scattering of the edible ones.  Among the fig’s less palatable kin are rubber trees, strangler figs and the holy bodi tree.

Figs may look and taste great once they have ripened, but the journey from flower to fruit is a total freak-show. The actual flowers of the fig form and open (en mass) inside the juvenile fruit.  In order for pollination to occur, tiny specialist fig wasps must crawl through the tiny aperture at the base of the fruit.  Once inside they rush about (as much as you can inside a fig), laying eggs and disturbing enough of the pollen for pollination to occur. After this, their purpose is served and they drop dead – often inside the fig.

Fortunately for those of you who are now feeling a bit queasy, and wondering how many wasps you’ve eaten in the name of a sticky mouthful, all modern figs are self fertile. In other words, they are entirely wasp-free.  If, like me, you have a perverse thing for roughing it food-wise, and you really want to get an idea of what our ancestors had to endure in this regard, try eating a few ripe Morton bay figs (yes they are edible). These are sweet, if a little gritty, and are usually crammed full of protein-rich wasp maggots and assorted corpses.  I was supposed to be pushing the virtues of the fig, so I’ll dispense with the graphic biology and get back to the gush.

Growing figs

I’ve said it before in a previous column and I’ll say it again here – if you don’t have a fig tree in your garden, or in a tub on your deck, you deserve a good telling off.  They are the easiest fruit to grow, seeming to thrive through abuse and neglect and are almost invulnerable to disease. The only real pests you’ll encounter are birds, who have an almost preternatural ability to find ripe figs.  On a small tree their voracious appetites can lead to heart breaking disappointment in a few short hours.  The sneaky little buggers will turn up at dawn, full of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-their-beaks innocence, demolish your entire crop and then sit about in the trees smirking.  Rosellas are particularly adept at bringing misery to the fig grower, and should be viewed with great suspicion whenever they arrive in your neck of the woods – no matter how charming they may seem.  I’ve tried to convince my cat that Rosellas are not deadly, screeching sky demons (as she seems to believe) but delectable hook-beaked kitty-morsels. She remains unconvinced and wholly terrified of them.

Once your fig tree is a few years old it will produce far more fruit than you need and it becomes easier to let the bird have their fill.  I only net (I use tulle – MUCH cheaper than real bird net) the best fruit and let the bastard birds gorge on the rest.

There are hundreds of named fig cultivars, but they all fall into one of two basic types – red fleshed and white fleshed. Skin colour isn’t a very reliable indicator of what lies beneath, so it pays to know your figs intimately.  This difference in flesh colour isn’t just an aesthetic thing either; the two forms taste different too.  White fleshed figs tend to be super sweet, and syrupy and at full ripeness almost collapse under their own weight.  Red fleshed figs, while still sweet, have a distinct berry flavour and just enough acidity to counter the sugar.

The latter are by far my favourite of the two.  They are best picked straight from the tree and devoured in situ.  I actually prefer my figs just short of ripe- the extra acid and slight firmness is quite beguiling.

Eating figs

Apart from the slightly salacious joys of figs au natural, they can also be used in the kitchen in a myriad ways.  As is my way, I tend towards the simplicity. I don’t like cluttering the perfection of figs or any seasonal produce for that matter with too much embellishment.

• I’m very partial to sliced red-fleshed figs served with malevolently ripe blue cheese- Gorgonzola Picante is just perfect – and a drizzle of honey. It’s awfully a la mode to do this one with an oozing chunk of honey comb, but I have no patience for wax-gummed teeth.
• Grilled figs are another favourite in our household – halve the figs sprinkle with raw sugar, a little orange zest and grill until sizzling and fragrant. Best served with good vanilla ice cream or crème anglaise.
• But it’s actually a savoury dish that is my favourite way of cooking with figs – it’s just about my favourite way of eating them too. The actual origin of this recipe is a bit vague – it came to me a few years ago by way of my mother, who maintains that it’s a traditional Provencal harvest dish. Considering the method and ingredients she’s probably right, but my mother has a patchy way of organising her thoughts, so who knows?

This dish has become something of an Easter tradition in our family and is – if you ask me – a bit more interesting than the standard Easter lamb.  The recipe may look suspiciously simple, but that’s the whole point. It’s just a humble show case of outstanding produce and is as such, a true delight to eat.

Probably Provencal Figgy Fish

1 fillet per person of super-fresh white fish – gurnard or tarakihi are particularly good.

At least 2 ripe figs per person- sliced into quarters

½ bottle dry white wine

Generous handful of good black olives – Kalamata or Nicoise (not those dreadful pitted black things)

Olive oil for frying

Salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 180 Celsius.   Flour the fish and lightly brown in a hot oiled pan. Scatter the figs and olives over the fish.  Add the wine and gently shake the pan,  rather than stirring which will demolish the fish.  Season to taste and place in oven for approximately 15-20 minutes or until fish is cooked, the sauce is starting to thicken and the figs are slightly softened.  Adjust the seasoning and serve with crusty, oven-warmed baguette.  This is the sort of dish you can plonk in the middle of the table eat communally.

The fig season is short (with or without marauding parrots) and very, very sweet. Make the most of it.

Kitchen quality time

Virgil Evetts 

 So the school holidays are upon us again. Yay. Fortunately our ‘child’ (my baby brother-in-law, has lived with us since he was a mere bairn, long story…) is now a gangly uni-student and needs no entertainment outside of loud expletive-laden music, alcohol and the odd curiously-smitten girl. But it wasn’t so long ago that school holidays meant that age old dilemma of how to entertain a ferociously smart and infuriatingly bored boy for weeks on end. In summer this wasn’t such a problem. Once chiselled free from his computer he could be sent to a friend’s house, taken to the beach, the park, etc.  But the winter holidays, starting with the buffet of weather phenomena that is Easter, were an altogether more challenging time for us as parent-type figures and for the bored boy alike. Sure, you can go to the movies, the museum, the mall, but New Zealand by and large isn’t big on indoor entertainment. The choices are quickly exhausted, as are funds.

No doubt the above is more than a little familiar to any parent, caregiver or whatever you want to call yourself.  So what can you do on the cheap? What can you do that doesn’t involve brain-rotting electronic ‘entertainment’ but is still fun?

Well, if there was ever a perfect time for some serious parent/child bonding in the kitchen (and like teaching your own child to drive it’s probably debatable) it might just be a rainy day in the holidays. At least you’ve got a captive audience.

To my way of thinking, teaching a child to respect food and to love, rather than fear, cooking is one of the most valuable things you can pass on. Yes, love, compassion and all those warm fuzzies are important too, I guess, but they won’t put an edible meal on the table.  Also, I’m told on somewhat biased authority that a boy who can cook is quite a catch (this is a very good selling point to teenage boys).

As Jamie Oliver has shown us (repeatedly, ad nauseum thanks, we get it now James), a terrifying number of children are growing up believing that all food comes from cans or the depths of the supermarket freezer, and whilst proficient in microwave management they could barely tell a stove apart from lawnmower, let alone know how to use one.  So please, please teach the kids to cook.

 There is a gooey tendency to patronise children when it comes to cooking lessons. Most books on the subject are full of dinosaur shaped cakes and spaghetti and cheese covered scone-dough creations. While it’s true that most children will enjoy making and devouring this sort of thing, I believe in pushing a little harder.  Cooking is a grown up thing so children should learn to cook like grown-ups. Obviously I don’t mean uber-adult haute cuisine, but real food- pesto, hummus, a nice poached egg. As I’ve said countless times before, the best food is usually the simplest. This to me is one of the true joys of cooking.  A few choice ingredients can come together and work pure magic.

So I’ve assembled here a few ideas to try with kids in the kitchen when the rain starts falling (and let’s face it, it’s inevitable) these holidays.

All of these have been made and enjoyed by aforementioned baby brother-in-law throughout his childhood and will hopefully make him a hit on the flatting circuit. If he ever leaves home.

I’m not a big fan of drumming the science of nutrition into young, impressionable heads. Kids don’t need to know those details, nor do they need to start obsessing about their weight. If you teach them to make real food from basic ingredients and that old adage about everything in moderation, the rest will follow in time. I once over-heard a mother quite skilfully fostering lifelong body-image issues in her little girl by telling her  that she couldn’t have an ice cream because ‘ice-cream makes you fat and ugly’. Nice.

 A brief Achtung [!] that I hope I don’t really need to add- kitchens are full of stabby, slicey, burny things that can have some seriously detrimental affects on unsupervised children. Remember that old joke about the baby with the potato peeler? Based on a true story.

Pizza

Just show me the child who doesn’t like Pizza.  Sure you can buy the frozen kind, and most kids will very happily oblige by wolfing them down, but where’s the fun in that? Making a pizza from scratch can take the best part of an afternoon if you get your resident offspring making the dough from scratch. Sure, it’s a messy business once the flour gets airborne and doughy fingers escape from the non-stick confines of the kitchen but it’s this kind of tactile cooking that kids remember. My basic pizza base recipe goes something like this- 2 cups of flour, a good pinch of salt, enough water and yeast to make an elastic dough and a good splash of olive oil.  I’ve never written it down before because my mother showed me how to do it and taught my hands to know when it’s right. I’ve never forgotten and neither have my fingers.  This is Crucial lesson #1 for any kitchen newbie: learn to trust your senses rather than relying purely on the infallibility of recipes.

I like to let children’s imagination go wild with pizzas. It’s a good way of letting them learn what works and what… offends the very angels in heaven. It’s one thing to tell a kid that banana and tuna don’t go together and another (and far more memorable one) for them to learn firsthand. Crucial lesson #2: we all make mistakes- learn from them.

Pesto

I know of a small boy who until recently refused to eat anything other than pesto sandwiches. It was the first real solid food he ate and he seemed to regard it as the archetype of all things edible. I like this. It shows how cosmopolitan our tastes have become when an otherwise normal kiwi kid obsesses over pesto, a sauce that 20 years ago was regarded as outrageously exotic and new (in New Zealand anyway- the Italians have been making it for centuries). Pesto – of the original Genovese or basil persuasion – seems to have almost universal acceptance with the young kiwi palate. It only takes minutes to prepare but is a great way of teaching kids how to build flavours. Use loads of fresh basil, cashew nuts (far cheaper than pine nuts), cheap generic parmesan (use the real deal if you’re a purest), plenty of garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Encourage your trainees to taste the ingredients separately and to judge the finished product with their eyes and taste buds. Crucial lesson #3: taste, taste and taste again

Eggs

There is something very satisfying about lying in bed to the sound of a child quietly cooking themselves an egg for breakfast. Satisfying because you are still in bed. Don’t underestimate the value of self-catering kids.  But as Queen Delia has pointed out (via a cook-book trilogy and TV series – way to stretch a point!), a woeful number of children are venturing forth into the world without this precious skill. Eggs are tasty little monkeys and as I recall have been officially pardoned of all previous charges of cardiovascular misdemeanour, so we should be in eating them by the protein-rich bucketful. Anyway, who can afford meat these days?  I do agree with indoctrinating children in the ethics of eating. The odd You-Tube horror clip on the reality of battery farming is a sobering but valuable lesson. Probably best skipped if you’re a battery-egg household. The easiest style of eggery for the first-timer is scrambled. This takes but a minute, but if you don’t time it right, your eggs will be stone cold by the time the toast is done. Crucial lesson #4: timing is everything- plan ahead.

Schnitzel

A personal favourite of mine. As a child there was no finer meal in my books than Weiner schnitzel, cooked in frothy, sizzling butter, served with mashed potatoes and probably some sort of boiled plant that I ignored or tossed out the window (we didn’t have a dog). I’ve since found that all children seem to have a pre-programmed love of schnitzel and any other breaded fried food for that matter. Schnitzel is dead-easy to make but is both noisy [bash, bash, bash] and messy- two things dear to the heart of every healthy child. Getting to grips with the latter is particularly important for any budding kitchen apprentice. Eggy, floury and bread crumbed fingers are reality of making a decent piece of schnitzel .Crucial lesson # 5: cooking can be icky- get over it.

Hummus

When I was a child chickpeas were loathsome things. Mercifully unknown to most children, and hated by those of us unfortunate enough to be raised by pulse-obsessed hippies.

But oh how the world has changed. The chickpea – in the form of hummus – is the dip and sandwich spread of choice for an entire generation of kiwi kids; stranger still, I’ve come to love the stuff too.

Just as previous generations were taught at a tender age to make evaporated milk/onion soup chip- dip, the contemporary child needs know how to whip up a batch of hummus. If you really want to go the whole nine yards you can get them soaking dried chickpeas a day in advance and regularly changing the stinking water. Then again, why bother when canned are just as good? Crucial lesson #6: sometimes even the best cook cuts corners.

These are just a few ideas. Depending on the age and interest of the child, you can teach them just about anything. The main thing is to keep it fun, practical and avoid being preachy. No kid wants to feel like they’re back at school in middle of the holidays, so when tempers start to fray or if boredom sets in, do something else. You don’t need to impart your entire repertoire in one day.

Fend for yourself: the art of cooking selfishly

 Virgil Evetts.

Every so often, if I lack inspiration, if I’m feeling tired and world weary ,or I just can’t be bothered,  I send out a text to the rest of the household reading ‘FFYS’: Fend for yourself. This tells them that tonight they will just have to make do without my services as galley slave.  It’s every man (and one woman) for themselves.  Rather than treating this like a chore they all quite enjoy these nights. I do too – it means we can each assemble something quick and simple that we know the others wouldn’t suffer.

For my best beloved it can mean any number of tomato-based pasta dishes that aren’t really my sort of thing. Occasionally, if she’s feeling a little sulky about the whole FFYS business, she will cook herself an egg in various gloomy, unimaginative ways.  This is an elaborate and admirably committed attempt at guilt-tripping me into cooking; she is, you see (allegedly), mildly allergic to eggs.

The baby-brother-in-law, a 21 year old EMO-like creature (who for reasons too tragic and convoluted to describe here lives under our stairs in self-imposed squalor), is shaping up to be a fairly decent cook in his own right.   He is however a little more experimental in his tastes than me.  He has so far married butter chicken with pasta, pizza, nachos and hamburgers, and has lately been muttering about fritters. Chances are on a FFYS night he’ll execute (admittedly with some finesse) one of these abominations.

Occasionally brother and sister will join forces to create something they both enjoy- very often the ubiquitous BLAT. Not something I’m mad on really but each to their own and all that…

For me, as the ever-considerate cook of our happy little household, FFYS nights are a celebration of being able to cook selfishly, without a thought for la famiglia and their various disparate tastes.  These nights don’t seem to come around much anymore, but when they do, one of the following is likely to feature:

Pizza

Made with those very good super-thin pre-made bases. Yes I make my own bases sometimes, but it just aint gonna happen on a week night. I like to keep my pizzi very simple; basically a Margarita with a little salami or prosciutto. To make my  sauce, which is the very foundation of a good pizza, I drain and squeeze the juice from a can of tomatoes, and blend them with a few tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of salt, a few dried chilies and a sprig or two of oregano (preferably the peppery Greek or wild form). Keep your toppings sparse and your oven incendiary.

 Must be eaten with copious quantities of wine.

Carpaccio

My fondness for raw beef is not shared by the rest of the house-hold, or in fact anybody else I know, so it’s strictly an FFYS venture.  I buy a small piece of very good beef fillet, partially freeze it and then slice it paper thin with a razor-sharp knife. A splash of balsamico, some luscious green EVO (or better still white truffle oil), a little raw garlic, Parmigiano,  and a scattering of wild rocket  turns a pound of sticky flesh into a plate full of indecent pleasure.  Scoop up with super crunchy crostini.  Guaranteed to deeply offend vegetarians.

American hot dogs

I know.  How déclassé am I? Well, we’re all entitled to a few dirty little secrets and, as it happens, this one can make a damn fine meal. Sure they’re of highly questionable nutritional value, and it’s debatable whether any actual meat is involved in the franks, but I like them all the same.

I use bog-standard hot dog buns and franks, because hot dogs are one of those things that shouldn’t be too real.  It’s the embellishments that make all the difference. First off, I fry the sausages in a hot, oiled pan until their skins split and start to blacken. This imparts a little bit of life into the otherwise unfathomable flavour of the franks

I put down a generous layer of caramelized onions under the sausages (having first toasted the bun) and rich, thick, whole grain mustard and cheese béchamel overtop. So what if the kilojoule count is punching through the stratosphere?  They’re a doddle to make and oh so good.  Health be damned.

Mince on toast

This one is about as kiwi as you can get, and I’ve only tweaked it just the tinniest bit from its sloppy, suburban roots.  I fry prime beef mince in a very hot pan with just a little garlic and plenty of seasoning (especially white pepper). It should be very well browned, to the point of being slightly crispy and without a drop of liquid remaining; I don’t go in for that ‘wet bowel motion’ look with my mince.

To accompany this I make a quick salsa by melting about a tablespoon of butter *and a little oil in a hot pan, adding about 2 cups of roughly chopped tomatoes and a few good glugs of Tabasco-style sauce. This is simmered just to the point where the tomatoes are starting to collapse.

Serve the mince on crunchy toasted whole grain bread with plenty of salsa on the side.

The magic of this meal is in its simplicity. It’s really nothing more than an assembly of very good ingredients and that is nearly always my favourite type of cooking.

*Butter may be an unlikely addition to a tomato based sauce, but it works a scary kind of magic.

Steak au galette de pomme de terre

Ok, so it’s really just a nice bit of steak with a hash brown but, as with the previous dish, it’s all about the produce. My best beloved, while not remotely vegetarian, doesn’t like what she describes as ‘hunks of flesh’ (steak).  Another volume in the library that is her food neuroses.   I, on the other hand, love the stuff. The bloodier the better and preferably crazed with moist marbling and trimmed with exquisite silken fat. Oh my.

My local butcher does the most extraordinarily thick ‘New York cut’ sirloins. These are quite simply(assuming you don’t shun your predatory urges) the ultimate FFYS indulgence. You don’t mess with meat like this. Season it generously (once again, I favour white pepper over black), oil the meat rather than the pan and make sure aforementioned pan is melting-hot. That’s it. No marinade, no pummelling with a mallet. Just leave it be.  How far you cook your steak is up to you, but I will just tell you that everything you may have heard about chefs spitting on your food when you order well-done steak is probably true. There is no greater insult to the dearly departed steer (or by association the chef), and you deserve all you get in the way of inedible grey meat and chef’s nasal clearings. Don’t be thinking of reaching for the bottle of Tommy S either;  push your arteries a little further with good dollop of fresh herb butter.  An animal died for this so make it count.

I use waxy potatoes for hash browns because they have the best ‘mouth feel’ for this style of cooking. Otherwise it’s the usual hash brown treatment- grate them, squeeze them and fry until crisp. To offset the richness of the meat and potato, I like a small rocket salad on the side, dressed with plenty of EVO and lemon juice.

FFYS nights are a win/win situation for all involved. Everyone gets to eat what they want, and cook gets a night off from considering the needs and time frames of others.  If this isn’t a tradition in your household, give it whirl. Every cook deserves to be a little selfish from time to time.

It’s not about love:

Ignoring Valentine ‘s Day and surviving the summer kitchen
Virgil Evetts

I suppose I could have jumped on the commercial bandwagon this week and thrown together some Valentine-inspired recipes for lovers or food for a-wooing, but alas, my cynicism prevents me. Valentine’s Day is banned in my house, along with bacchanalian excess on New Year’s Eve and tom-foolery on April 1^st . We reserve the right to be affectionate, intoxicated and play cruel practical jokes on each other any time of the year.

So instead I’ve focused on the other inescapable force of the week  [at least in the upper North Island]; the cloying, sticky and energy sucking monster that is summer 2009. I’ve spent most of this week either thanking God for office air-con or gasping on my sofa, drowning in sweat, plagued by mosquitoes and cursing my role as primary cook in a house full of fussy, overly informed eaters. 

Not only should the food be light and simple on these scorching summer eves, but so should the preparation. Which brings us to that less than titillating inevitability, the summer salad…

But hey, it’s not all bad news. You must know by now that I’m not one to simply toss a few leaves and hope for the best.  Chlorophyll and cellulose does not a real meal make…

Sure, there are plenty of traditional and avant-garde salads of a European persuasion to choose from if you feel so inclined; Niçoise, Caesar, radicchio  with cough syrup etc blah blah. And they’re all perfectly fine in their own right too [with the possible exception of the latter], but just not quite dinner to my way of thinking  [gluttonously], or to warrant all that chopping. I have no head [nor interest] for finance, but I’m pretty sure that high investment, low return is a pretty bum deal.

If I’m going to raise a sweat in the kitchen it has to be for something I can really call dinner. It needs some carbs, some fat, some squish, and some crunch. A fully rounded package if you will. The vegetable-rich cuisines of South East Asian rarely disappoint in this regard. Here salads are a serious business and have been shaped by a  year-round assault of the  same sort of dirty, moist heat that hangs over Auckland all summer.

Two Asian salads in particular have been getting regular outings in our house of late:  one of which,   yam neua, is Thai in origin, or perhaps I should say influence as I make a pretty pared down version of the original [which can be horrifically hot]; and the other, Gado gado is a classic Indonesian dish that deserves to be far better known it currently is . Both of these dishes are light, zingy and refreshing, but still substantial enough to leave you feeling well sated.  Despite these salads both hailing from countries known for their fondness for chilli, you can limit and [sigh]… dare I say, omit it altogether. But you shouldn’t. The chilli makes you sweat which helps to cool you down and it triggers the release of endorphins, which make you feel good.  Of course  if you want to be hot and miserable be my guest.

 In New Zealand we usually think of Thai food as rather curry-centric, but in my experience, salads are the true stars of this cuisine and are certainly more regularly eaten by the average Thai.

The Thai idea of a salad, or yam, is somewhat removed from the European approach of plated  foliage. Everything is usually finely chopped, meat or fish are often included and most surprisingly for a salad they are served warm, or even hot.  When ordering salads in Thailand it pays to have a good Thai/English dictionary on hand as they can contain some rather challenging ingredients. Be particularly wary of the word Mangda which means water bug [or pimp, depending on the context]. These rather viscous creatures are not a pleasant surprise in any dish. Come to think of it neither are pimps.

Yam Neua

Thai [inspired] beef salad

[serves 3+]

500gms prime minced beef

1 red onion [finely sliced]

4 cloves New Zealand garlic [crushed]

Fresh chilli to taste [crushed]

2cm pieces of fresh ginger [peeled and crushed]

Juice of two lemons [limes are best but prohibitively pricey in summer]

3 Tbsp + fish sauce

1tsp + brown sugar

1 Tbsp dark soy sauce

1 Tbsp sesame oil

3 kaffir lime leaves [de-stemmed and finely chopped]

1 bunch of fresh Vietnamese mint * [de-stemmed and finely chopped]

1 tomato per person

1 cup blanched fresh green beans [roughly chopped]

In a very hot pan, sauté the mince until well browned and slightly crispy. Set aside.

Heat a little peanut oil [or similar] in the pan and sauté the garlic, ginger and chilli until tender. Add to the beef along with the onion, beans and tomato. Carefully toss.

To make the dressing combine all remaining ingredients in a bowl and adjust to taste. You are looking for that harmonious Thai blend of salty, sour, sweet and spicy.

Pour over the beef mixture, toss again and allow to rest for approximately 10 minutes. This will allow the beef to cool slightly and the flavours to properly develop.

Serve over roughly torn lettuce leaves and season with a drizzle of ketjap manis  [sweet soy sauce]

Like all Thai food this should be accompanied with [preferably Jasmine] rice. The Thai approach is that rice is always the main meal and everything else is but a garnish.

Note: If you don’t like raw onion, soak the slices in lemon juice for about an hour before using. This effectively ‘cooks’ the onion but preserves the texture.

*Vietnamese mint is available at the fresh herbs counter of most supermarkets. It tastes like a very peppery version of coriander with citrus-like overtones. Grows very easily from cuttings.

Gado gado

Indonesian peanut sauce salad

I’ve never quite understood why Indonesian food hasn’t caught on. Dish for dish I think it’s a more interesting cuisine than its better known cousin , Malaysian [although they do share many dishes and techniques], yet apart from chicken satay and nasi goreng most people wouldn’t know an Indonesian dish if it snuck up behind them with a gamelan orchestra.

Gado gado is a real no fuss dish. It relies on very fresh vegetables and great peanut sauce. Nothing more, nothing less, but it’s a guaranteed winner.

1 cup crunchy peanut butter

1 can coconut milk

2cm piece of fresh ginger [peeled and crushed]

1 onion [finely chopped]

3 cloves garlic [crushed]

Fresh chilli to taste [crushed]

1  kaffir lime leaf [de-stemmed and crushed]

Brown sugar to taste

1 tablespoon+ fish sauce Or 1 small piece of shrimp paste [terasi]

¼ cup tamarind water Or the juice of 2 lemons/limes

1 egg per person [hard boiled and halved]

Fresh seasonal vegetables such as green beans, zucchini, bean sprouts, tomato, cucumber etc, all roughly sliced.

To make the sauce, sauté the onions over a medium heat until very tender, add the garlic, ginger, chilli and lime leaf. Sauté for a minute or so longer.  Add the peanut butter and stir until melted and spluttering. Stir in the fish sauce or shrimp paste. Add the coconut milk. Stir until well blended and simmering. Add the tamarind or citrus juice and sugar. Add a little water to thin if necessary.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  Set aside. This sauce burns easily and rather spectacularly so take care.

Use any combination of vegetables you like, but a thoughtful mix of textures and flavours  is important. Traditionally the vegetables should be raw but I prefer to par-cook zucchini, beans and other tough candidates. It’s all a matter of taste really.

I like to boil the eggs in the pot with the rice. This is just matter of pot-economy really. I’m told it’s a bit of a health risk but I’m still kicking, so go figure.

Generously smother the vegetables in the sauce, serve with rice and garnish with the halved boiled eggs.

Happy Valentine ‘s Day, if you’re that way inclined, otherwise enjoy and play nicely.

Virgil

Iced Milks….

Virgil Evetts

I’ve had a lifelong love affair with iced coffee.  My mother had a scandalously permissive attitude towards her children and grown up beverages- tea, coffee whatever pleased us. I think she was just glad we weren’t breast feeding anymore. Evetts children are famously early teethers .

Anyway, considering the examples mum set, she couldn’t really object to our precocious tastes. She trained me to wake her with strong, honey-sweetened tea every morning, and on many a summer’s day I was dispatched to the dairy with a jar of Moccona, and a note asking the obliging Mrs White to make her a coffee milkshake.  I was too young to be embarrassed by this palaver or to point out to mum that we owned a blender. I remember slyly sipping from the old fashioned giraffe cup as I trod home. And thus began a long and joyfully enduring addiction to cold milk and caffeine.

Visits to tearooms and cafes always involved [and do so to this day] a long, tall, cream-crowned iced coffee. This was iced coffee as it existed in the 80s; a filling, energising, and beguiling blend of bitter-sweet, creamy bliss. Every café worth its salt offered the drink, along with the slightly lesser,  but still perfectly decent, iced chocolate.

But something has happened in recent years to my beloved and humble iced coffee. It’s not the drink it used to be. Not in the hands of chi-chi city café owners anyway.  These days it’s as if iced coffee is a rendering of some ancient recipe, pieced together from fragments of pastel coloured 80s hieroglyphs. We know it involves coffee and ice, but the rest is anyone’s guess.

Lately I’ve been served alleged iced coffee made from coffee-flavoured syrup and trim milk (thin and medicinal), filter coffee and evaporated milk (curiously paint-like in both colour and texture), loaded with artificial vanilla essence (tastes like ants) and,  most puzzlingly, scalding hot with a couple of ice cubes dropped in as a sort of afterthought .  Iced coffee has even been the catalyst for me being firmly ‘invited’ to leave a café . To cut a long story short it involved a café manager’s stubborn refusal to make me an iced coffee because ‘that drink’s  old-school’ (maaan). My resulting,  and perhaps poorly pitched,  rant about his coffee making skills, political leanings and silly bum-fluff moustache led to the nearest exit being pointed out to me rather emphatically. What can I say?  I’m not a morning person.

But I’ve had some good experiences too, including memorable renditions made from freshly pulled espresso, milk and cream. Very nice, but it’s not quite iced coffee as  I remember it.

So how is it that we have forgotten how to make such as café standard?

Personally I blame New Zealand’s coffee culture. We have, in a few short years, dragged ourselves out of coffee hell, where a few big brands dominated the market with flaccid bags of what they claimed was coffee (but may well have been potting mix), and where white or black were the only real choices if you didn’t want your sexual orientation brought into question.  We are now informed consumers of the bean.   We care about the style of roast, the country of origin, the smugness of fair trade and the ethics of organic. And that’s before you get to any actual consumption. You can’t simply order ‘coffee’ (thank God), you need to specify; flat white, latte, macchiato, short black, corretto and so on and such like…

And therein, methinks lies the answer. We’ve become lost in the details. Iced coffee in its true old fashioned down-country tea rooms form, has largely been dismissed as too pedestrian and crude to be of any worth.

Similarly I fear milk shakes are starting to suffer the same fate. A local café I frequent (but really shouldn’t) doesn’t do them anymore, but you can have a frappe or smoothie if you like. I don’t.

Frappe, at least here in Auckland, usually means, ‘we’ve got a load of ice out back, right, and we need to move it, see?  So we’re going to grind it up with about a teaspoon of milk, a bit of sugar and maybe a squirt of coffee. Then we’re going to sell it to you for $5 a cup under some naff French name that we don’t know how to pronounce’.  FYI Frappe doesn’t rhyme with crap, but perhaps it should.

I can’t be doing with smoothies either. They always seem like the sort of thing rest-homes wiz up for residents who don’t do solids. They’re a bit like what happens when you mix up all the paints on the palette: you end up with green sludge.  

So as with art deco buildings,  and apparently oaks trees gifted by Hitler (happily residing in the grounds of Timaru boys high and surprisingly free of chainsaw attacks), I think there is a growing  pool of foods deserving of cultural heritage protection. If I had to elect a list of such threatened café drinks, it would definitely include the following:  

Iced coffee

Made with instant coffee, coldwater and full-cream milk poured over a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, topped with a LOT of freshly whipped cream and finished with a dusting of cinnamon. Must be served in a tall, chunky glass. Tastes like childhood to me.

Iced Chocolate

I would occasionally sulkily settle on this if its sexier cousin was unavailable. Made with cocoa (never drinking chocolate), otherwise as above but finished with chocolate sprinkles. Has been similarly corrupted by silliness over time.  The mint and chilli flavoured version I encountered recently was particularly irritating.

The classic milkshake

Ultra-artificial, preposterously flavoured and superfluously lurid, milkshake syrup is a shining example of the wonders of industrial food technology. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than utterly fake and probably very bad for you. I love it for that honesty. My personal flavours of choice are…

• Jaffa : tastes just like the sweets but is perhaps even more magnificently artificial. Not to be confused with J.A.F.A
• Spearmint: the best choice for a scorching summer day. It has a subtle minty flavour and a pale green colour that wouldn’t look out of place on a school toilet block.
• Creaming soda: I’ve never quite worked out what this one tastes like, possibly strawberry and vanilla, but I like it all the same. Apparently the manufacturers don’t know either as it’s colourless.

And finally, milkshakes, regardless of flavour, must come in one of those big old fashioned giraffe cups.

 Well that’s me anyway. But what about you, dear reader? Are you of an iced coffee persuasion or more of a milkshake sort of person? What floats your cold drink boat?

Eating Otago – Virgil Evetts

 Like many New Zealanders, I’m better travelled internationally than within my own country.  It just seems so much easier to fly to Queensland than Queenstown. We’re funny like that in New Zealand. Maybe it’s our bottom-of-the-world inferiority complex [HIV to the tall poppy syndrome’s AIDS] – how could our own fair shores be as good, if not better, than anything across the ditch and beyond?  Well, it’s not so much that in my case, it’s more to do with the knowledge that whatever corner of our fair fiefdom I choose to visit will be full of other New Zealanders. No offence, but I get enough of them at home. I travel for culture [which makes my fondness for Northern Queensland rather baffling], for landscape, for history, and most significantly, for flavours that I can’t get at home. You know- the usual conceited middleclass nonsense.  

Well, we might not have much variety in the culture department here, but all the other boxes get a firm tick. With this in mind, I’ve been making an effort to see more of my own country and to open my eyes and mouth to all that her provinces have to offer. Because let’s be honest, all hand on heart, God of Nations carry-on aside, we live in a remarkably beautiful country.  We grow, manufacture and ferment some of the finest things that will ever pass your lips. The reasons to travel domestic are legion.

In this vein, I recently spent a week in Cromwell, Central Otago,  the very heart of the NZ stone fruit industry and what is now considered to be one of the greatest wine producing regions in the world [as opposed to all those great vineyards on Jupiter].   We stayed with my best beloved’s father, who is establishing a lifestyle block orchard on the shores of Lake Dunstan.  It’s a ridiculously picturesque spot; in fact the scenery of the entire region is overflowing with vast beauty, to an almost desensitising degree.  Soaring mountains with craggy snow-strewn peaks,  desolate valleys of wind-swept tussock and vast braided rivers. On top of all that Lord of the Rings out-takes footage splendour is a wealth of great local produce, which even on a bad day makes a compelling reason to visit Otago

Cherries

Those of us in the North of New Zealand have it tough when it comes to cherries. Needing a cold, dry winter they simply won’t set fruit up here.  Sure, there’s no lack of them in our shops over summer, but the difference between a tree- ripened cherry, bought direct from the orchard, and the fruit that turns up in Auckland is quite profound. Tree-ripened fruit have a perfect balance of acidity and sugar, a rich meaty texture and full rounded flavour. Store-bought cherries taste mealy and flaccid by comparison . You can’t drive far in central Otago without passing untold caged cherry orchards.  So precious is this crop that rather than netting the trees individually the entire orchard is kept in a retractable bird-proof cage. This incredibly pricey undertaking [tens of thousands of dollars per hectare] is the only way to keep the birds, and apparently more than a few thieving humans, off the fruit.  In peak season orchard prices drop to as little as $5-$7 per kilo and locals apparently get quite sick of cherries.  I can’t fathom it but I hear the same happens with crayfish in Kaikoura. In the space of a week I did come close to overindulging in cherries myself, but it was more an issue of gastric turbulence than a jaded palate.  I’ve heard of people travelling to Thailand specifically to eat mangosteen  , but flying for 12 hours for fruit is a bit beyond my passion and budget. On the other hand, a one hour flight to Queenstown for an annual cherry binge seems perfectly reasonable.

Apricots

Another fruit that just doesn’t survive the trip north with its dignity intact.  A fresh, perfectly ripe, and preferably sun-warmed apricot is like a fuzzy little sphere of summer; juicy, sweet as honey with a gorgeous toothsome texture and heady fragrance. Exquisite, swoon-worthy bliss. Unless you have access to a very good fruiterer, don’t waste your time with fresh apricots in the upper North island. They’re picked too early and although pretty enough, lack flavour and finesse.  Do look out for the dried ones from Otago though- these are the dried fruit of your childhood, sour but fragrant and luridly coloured.  Perfect in mustard fruits and ever welcome in lunch boxes.

 Unfortunately the season hadn’t quite kicked off in Otago when I was there but I managed to pinch a few fruit from a woefully unsupervised orchard. I don’t advocate this sort of thing but they were just so temptingly orange.

Wild thyme

The hills around much of Otago are blanketed in wild common thyme.  Technically the plant is a weed [introduced by settlers], and not terribly popular with DoC, but like gorse in the North Island- it aint goin nowhere. Unlike gorse however, it’s a versatile beast in the kitchen.  Due to the tough growing conditions in the mountains – freezing winters, blazing summers and very little water for years on end – Otago wild thyme is powerfully flavoursome; with a pungent,  peppery burn on the palate. Common, well watered garden thyme, despite being the same species tastes like some insipid salad green by comparison.  Wild thyme marries superbly with rustic country dishes like spit roasted lamb, giving the fatty, savoury meat a distinctly high-country accent.

Shrek, central Otago’s inexplicably famous bag of dags feral sheep staggered out of the wilds in 2004 after 6 years of grazing on wild thyme and other mountain herbs. While the rest of the country adopted him as some sort of icon of pluckiness all I could think of was dinner.  In the immortal words of Homer Simpson;   “this is lamb, not a lamb”

Rabbit

In the North Island we hear about what a terrible pest rabbits are in the countryside, but visit any farm up here and you’ll wonder what all the fuss is about. The rabbits are there all right, hopping about in their cute rabbity way, but in fairly modest numbers that amount to little more than a Peter Rabbit-scale nuisance in the lettuce patch.  In the high country of the South Island it’s a very different story. Down there Peter has gathered about 12 million of his nearest and dearest and they’re having a massive, hood-rattling party. They’re a menace [and just a little menacing], hopping about in large arrogant groups, indifferent to the daylight, pock-marking the landscape with burrows and eating all plant life to the ground. Despite my animal loving leanings, I was happily shooting at them with an air rifle by the first evening.  Wild rabbit is a fabulous meat, and would feature prominently in my diet if I lived in a bunny-besieged locale. It makes excellent stew, can be grilled with herbs, cooked in wine and cream, made into ragu and even squeezed out as sausages. Yes, Thumper can be a little stringy at times, but he makes up for it with bucket loads of flavour. Lock and load.

Honey

Great honey can be found all over New Zealand, but two of the best, including one that I regard as New Zealand’s best kept food secret are produced exclusively in Central Otago. Vipers Buglos is a scraggly form of echium that paints the hills and valleys of Otago blue every summer with its nectar rich flowers.  It yields a superb, light honey with a bouquet like a summer meadow. So maybe I did steal that descriptor from a shampoo bottle, but it’s all true.  This honey isn’t overwhelmed with the polleny notes or deep earthiness of many other New Zealand honeys and it’s great on hot, buttery toast or in nice cup of Earl Grey. But by far the greatest honey of the region, and as I said earlier one of the finest foods coming out of NZ, is Otago thyme honey. The word elixir can be used here without a trace of hyperbole. During the spring/summer flowering season, hives are placed high in the thyme covered hills. The result is a honey with a deep, complex and almost overwhelmingly herbal flavour. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I just can’t get enough of the stuff. In winter I make sweet, fried ravioli which are stuffed with Gorgonzola and liberally drizzled with thyme honey. A real show stopper.  If you don’t feel like going to that much bother or you don’t do cheese and sweet, try a teaspoon dissolved in a little hot water and mixed into cold milk. The perfect, fragrant sleeping draft.

I’m sure I’ve just scraped the surface of the food delights on offer in Otago and seeing as I’m bound to be down there again, local knowledge would be welcome. Likewise I’d love to hear your regional favourites from around the country. I’m sure there is a reason to visit Hamilton, so convince me!

PS

I happened upon an amusing post script to this article last week when I opened the menu at the very decent O’Connell street bistro in Auckland – Pappardelle of braised Bendigo Station Rabbit, rimu smoked Bacon, Walnut Watercress pesto & Parmigiano Reggiano: $36. Somewhere in those craggy Otago hills is a gun toting Southern man who is laughing [between sips of Speight’s] all the way to the bank at the stupidity of latte loving JAFAs who pay for mainland vermin. Very nice it was too.

Virgil Evetts

I’m not a regular kneader.  For the most part I find the rules and regulations of baking altogether too stuffy.  I really don’t like being told what to do in the kitchen and baking recipes always read like a barked command to me.  I do however have a real passion for, nay addiction to, European festive breads. There is something so alluring and mysterious about the art [and although loathe to apply that word to food, it fits here] behind panetonne, pandoro [a wonderful bread which curiously the bakery of the same name does not produce], stollen and their various kith and kin.  Seeing as this most regal family of baked goods is pricey and poorly represented on local shelves, I have made something of a tradition out of making my own.  Everything about this process/ritual excites me; the rich silken dough, the exquisite dried and glace fruit, the citrus zest and, OMG, the smell!!!

So this is the one time of the year when I happily set aside my baking resentment issues, haul out the scales, liberally dust the kitchen in high-grade flour and put my dough hook to some serious use. Ooo-err.  Even if my results don’t entirely stack up against their imported counterparts [I think they come pretty close], the whole exercise is so utterly Christmassy that it almost doesn’t matter. It’s as much about the trip as the destination.

Everywhere you go in Europe around Christmas time, you’ll find various seasonal breads. They all tend to be rather similar beasts; sweet yeast dough enriched with butter and eggs [essentially heavily-embellished brioche] and further fortified with fruits, nuts, citrus zest and sometimes spices.  Lovely, fluffy,  fragrant delights.

And then there are the dour ‘cakes’ of English Christmas tradition. Why is it so much of English Christmas food seems to be designed to depress? Brussels sprouts, bread [!!!!]sauce, Christmas cake… it’s like paying penance by the spoonful.   All of these miseries are curiously popular with elderly woman.  Is there a correlation?

On the continent, by contrast, everything is sunshine and light, even if it does get dark at 3pm. Christmas foods are bright and cheerful and, dare I say it… celebratory. Well maybe I’m exaggerating just a little. Some of those pickled herring contrivances of the Netherlands and beyond are pretty grim.

Panetonne is by far the best known member of the illustrious and very large clan of continental Christmas cakes. Even if you don’t know the name you will be familiar with the loaf.  The distinctive high-domed, paper-cased, raisin and peel-studded treats fill the shelves of specialty food stores and bakeries everywhere you turn from around November on. The high-end imports come trussed up in absurdly ornate boxes and great swathes of coloured cellophane and tissue. I’m normally suspicious of pretty packaging- are they overcompensating for something? But in true Italian style, panetonne has both looks and substance.

A far from humble bread, panetonne is seriously steeped in a lot of rather dubious myth and legend, especially about its origins. The most persistent tall tale involves a smitten baker by the name of Tony who is said to have invented a racy new treat as a Christmas gift for his love interest – thus pane- Tony [Tony’s bread]. Nice story but probably not even remotely true. What we do know as fact is that an enriched [baker-speak for full of eggs and butter] bread called panetonne has been made in Milano for at least a few hundred years and that it was probably designed to resemble a cathedral cupola. The addition of fruit, fat, nuts and eggs was common trait of pagan festive foods [it’s all about fertility and such] and one that the Christians merrily adopted when they had done with converting or slaughtering the filthy heathens.  

In Italy there is a strong tradition of gifting panetonne to all and sundry at Christmas. It’s the default gift for anyone who isn’t immediate family.  Funny thing is you could get the feeling that nobody really likes them very much.  Re-gifting of panetonne is not only an acceptable practise but the norm. I have heard of people receiving a panetonne which they had gifted to a third party several years earlier. Actually opening the box and eating the bread appears to be rather rare. As much as I adore panetonne, I can sort of understand how this could happen in Italy. Italians are spoiled for choice when it comes to good food at the best of times, but around any major holiday things can get seriously out of hand as culinary one-upmanship takes over.  One can only eat so much.

For a number of years I obsessed about making panetonne. It’s notoriously complicated you see, considered almost impossible in a domestic setup by most Italians. Well, I wasn’t about to let that get in my way. I tried dozens of recipes, bastardized and hybridised several and eventually came up with a version that I am, just quietly, rather proud of.

Now, before you go too much further, a word or two of warning…

If at all possible use an electric mixer to work the dough. It needs a serious assault kneading-wise, and while I’m sure it’s quite do-able by hand you may wind up with permanent wrist damage, dooming you to an eternity of smutty ribbing.  This recipe has been tested in a fan-forced oven, on warm, dry days. I don’t know how well it will turn out in a regular oven; probably fine but no guarantees. If it’s a rainy or ultra-humid day, of the sort Auckland is so very good at putting on, you might as well pack away your mixing bowls. Do not proceed.  Humidity can play havoc with all baked goods but none more so than enriched breads. Oh the horror.

Well then, enough with the chatter. Here it is,  my very own recipe for panetonne. Consider it my Christmas gift to you…

Panetonne alla Virgili

3 tsp dried yeast [dissolve in a little warm water with a pinch of sugar]

3 cups+ high-grade flour

7 Tbs white sugar

7 Tbs butter

3 free-range eggs [not jumbo]

¾ – 1 cup milk [NOT non-fat]

½ tsp salt

½ cup raisens

½ cup glace peel [good quality and roughly chopped].

1-2 tsp pure vanilla essence.

Note: Ensure all ingredients are at room temperature before proceeding.

Optional: Paper panetonne cases. Available from good kitchen supply stores.

Method

Combine flour, sugar and salt in mixing bowl.  Add butter and begin mixing using the dough hook. Add eggs and continue mixing. Add yeast and vanilla essence and slowly add the milk. Leave to mix for about 5 minutes. As with all bread dough, the mixer should be set at its lowest speed. This is more to do with not burning out the motor than the needs of the dough.

The dough should now be very soft, elastic and slightly sticky.  At about this point you might be panicking, because for reasons that I’ve never been able to work out, the dough sometimes needs rather a lot more flour. Don’t worry, just add flour until the dough looks and feels as described above. If by any weird chance it’s too dry, add more milk. Trust me; you’ll know when it’s ready.

Mix for a further 10 minutes. Cover with a plastic bag or similar and allow to rise for about 2-3 hours or until well risen.

Punch down and mix again for 5 minutes. Cover again and leave to rise for about 1 hour. Punch down again and slowly start adding the fruit, gently working it in by hand. When all the fruit has been incorporated form into a large ball and place in a panetonne case or a deep, 20cm round non-stick cake tin. Ensure any folds are at the bottom. Cover loosely and allow to rise again for about 2-3 hours.

Pre-heat oven to 150c. If you have a pizza stone or cast iron skillet, use this as a tray. Uniform heat is important. Using a very sharp, greased knife cut an X on the top of the dough, place a generous Tablespoon of butter in the middle. Gently place in oven. Watch closely after the first 20 minutes but do NOT open the oven yet. The bread should rise up and eventually form a golden/brown dome. It may split as it cooks- this quite normal. From about 40 minutes it should be safe to start testing with a wooden skewer. When the skewer comes away clean from the centre, your panetonne is done. This may take up to 1 hour. Every oven is different.

Remove from the oven carefully and allow to cool on rack in a warm draft-free place.

Panetonne goes exceedingly well with coffee or dessert wines, depending [perhaps] on the hour of the day. It’s gorgeous lightly toasted and generously buttered and makes a trifle to put all others to shame.

Enjoy and a very Happy Christmas to you all.