Here are two undisputed facts about my mother:
1. She makes amazing chutney.
2. She is utterly unsentimental.
Whenever I go home to visit she is always offering to teach me how to make her signature chutneys (green papaya, mango) as "one day she will die and there won't be any more". Unlike my mother, I am sentimental and in deep and comfortable denial about anything ever happening to her, so I refuse to learn. Instead, I've taught myself to make my own. It's different enough to mum's to perpetuate the myth that she will always be around to make the others for me, and so good it passes muster with the great chutney-maker herself. So this year, I made her some. For Mother's Day. Even though she doesn't believe in it.
My friend Elizabeth put me on to this recipe, originally from Niloufer Ichaporia King's book My Bombay Kitchen. As the name suggests, it's made primarily with tomatoes (easy to chop in large quantities), has a relatively short list of other supermarket-available ingredients, and really requires nothing more than throwing everything into one pot and letting it bubble away for a couple of hours. It's brilliant on a sandwich or served alongside a curry, particularly a hot one as the sweetness of the tomatoes balances it beautifully. It's so good slathered on cornbread, delicious dolloped on a cracker with cheese, and jarred up, makes a lovely present... for mothers who are mortal, and their daughters in denial.
I was going to make something else for the blog this week but the Danish pastry I pulled from the oven Saturday morning was an unmitigated disaster. Happily, this recipe jumped out at me from the arts section of the Herald I was reading to console myself afterwards. Happily, I had most of the ingredients already. Happily, I was passing by the Chinatown fruit and vegetable markets on my way to a dinner at my friends' place Saturday night and was able to stock up on tomatoes and chillis. Happily, the cook at that dinner had some black mustard seeds to spare when I realised I didn't have any (and was too lazy to walk up to the shops to get some the next day). And so it all worked out in the end. I'll give the Danish another go sometime, but til then, slathering this incredible relish on a bacon and egg roll (or a curry, a jaffle, on a cracker with some cheese) makes me very happy indeed.
My mother and I are very different cooks. I'm a recipe-follower, she's more of a free-wheeler, adding and subtracting ingredients, changing cooking times, processes, and equipment, following her instincts. I clean as I go when I cook (a by-product of living in an apartment with a small kitchen) and she, well, to put it bluntly, does not. These fundamentally different approaches mean that when the two of us are in the kitchen together we drive each other crazy. After every visit home I vow never to put myself in that situation again. But her tomato chilli jam is so good it was worth making an exception.
My mum, a keen gardener, jokingly refers to this savoury jam as dynamic lifter. And indeed, it does elevate anything it's spread on to a whole new level of flavour. Mum uses it most often on a sandwich or with crackers and cheese, but it would be great dolloped on eggs, corn fritters, served alongside a sausage roll or swirled into sour cream as a dipping sauce. The heat of the chilli is offset by the sweetness of the tomatoes (and the sugar they're cooked with!) so if you're worried about serving it to anyone averse to spicy things, don't be. Conversely, if you like things hot (and you're more of a recipe-meddler, like my mother), you may want to up the chilli content. Whatever your approach, you can't go wrong.
Morning, noon or night, there's something intensely satisfying about eggs. My appreciation for them started early with boiled eggs, which was a regular breakfast growing up. My dad used to draw elaborate faces on them for us, which we'd take ghoulish delight in decapitating. They were a common childhood dinner too, as the oozy yellow centres of cheese-filled jaffles. These days I most often eat my eggs scrambled - especially if I've got a bit of cream or an extra white or yolk to use up - or lately, fried in a hole cut in a single slice of bread, as per this genius blog post, which cooks both toast and egg simultaneously in a cast-iron skillet. But for a crowd, the best way to cook eggs (other than shakshuka, of course, which is equally effortless and delicious) is an omelette.
I'm not talking about delicate,
light, made-to-order numbers that will have you chained to the stovetop
in a flipping frenzy most of the morning but one big,
vegetable-packed, feta-fied, finished-under-the-grill number to cut in
thick wedges and serve with toast.
Packed with green vegetables and herbs, the salty punch of feta and soft sweetness of tomatoes, this is the sort of egg dish that works at any time of day. Have it with toast for breakfast, as a sandwich filling for lunch or with a glass of wine for dinner. If you have an egg, you are fed. If you have six, so are your friends.
Once every four years, I spend a month watching football. A month setting my alarm for the early hours of the morning, staggering up, bleary-eyed, turning the television on and surrendering sleep for the wonder of the World Cup. I love the crowds, I love the personalities (the countries! the haircuts! the celebrations! the heroes! the villains!), I love the drama, I love the football. And I love an excuse to cook for friends, like this Saturday, when Australia took on Chile at the entirely civilised hour of 8am Sydney time. I suppose I should have themed our meal to the cuisine of one of the countries involved, but really what it came down to was something I could make in between matches (Spain v The Netherlands - a cracker of a game - finished around 7am), so as not to miss a second of play. And so, shakshuka: a way to cook eggs for a crowd without being chained to the stove.
A staple of many Middle-eastern cuisines, shakshuka - traditionally made in a cast-iron skillet - consists of eggs poached in a tomato sauce enriched with onion and chilli.
This recipe, from one of my favourite blogs, Smitten Kitchen, adds smoky cumin and spicy paprika to the sauce and scatters fetta and parsley over the top. Served on a slice of toasted sourdough, it's utterly delicious - as satisfying as a Tim Cahill header into the back of the net in the second half... no matter what the final scoreline.
If you want an insight into my state of mind at any given time, just look in my freezer. If it's extremely well-stocked, chances are I'm feeling stressed. In my weird, wonky logic, as long as I have good food at my disposal, then the work will get finished, the deadlines will be met and the pressure to get everything done will feel a little less intense. At times like these I seek comfort and more than anything, this is what I make.
When I was a child, and was regularly asked "what's your favourite meal?" (when such questions were deeply important), my answer would always be
minestrone. My mother made it often in our house and when I left home I adapted it to suit my somewhat lazier cooking style. Instead of soaking beans overnight and frying them off with the bacon at the beginning of the cooking process, I add some pre-cooked beans at the end. Instead of homemade stock, I'm happy with store-bought. And with making a big pot and then freezing it in single serve portions for my time of need. That time is now. My freezer is full. Which means it's all going to be okay.
In my professional life, I spend a lot of time waiting. For scripts to be read, decisions to be made, productions to be finished... It drives me crazy. I've never done one of those personality tests but I'm sure if I did I'd be classified as some manic crosser-off of tasks on a list, deadline-meeting type, and completely unsuited to my chosen career, which requires a lot of patience. Some things though, I don't mind waiting for.
Let me start by saying I'm a fan of baked beans. They're not for everyone I know that. There's a low-rent kind of quality to them, that's really (let's be frank here) just all about the can. And the sweet, gloopy, red sludge of sauce that binds together those mushy white beans. I'm sure if you bothered to read the nutritional information on the label you'd see they're full of sugar and salt and all manner of preservatives and things that are bad for you. But I love them anyway. There's nothing more comforting on a cold day than baked beans on toast. It's breakfast, it's lunch, sometimes it's even dinner. And a satisfying one at that. Particularly if that toast is not just toast but grilled cheese, or you add an egg (poached, fried, whatever you like) on top. So while I'm perfectly content with the instant gratification of opening a can, this recipe, which promised something similar in four hours (and that's just the cooking time!) intrigued me. I had a hunch that they were going to be worth it. And boy was I right.
Smoky
and sweet, with the subtle tang of vinegar, these are the kind of beans
that make you want to be a cowboy, or at least eat like one (alas my allergy to horses prevents me from considering this as an alternative line of work). But the taste is only the beginning of what's so good about them. The smell - as they cook slowly in the oven, infusing your kitchen with the heady aroma of bacon and onion, spices and garlic - is the very definition of warm and cosy. Waiting was never more wonderful.
