To Get Rich Is Glorious

Posted on 10/06/2015 by hotnsticky

To get rich might be glorious – but, to be content has its merits too.

We are packed and ready to leave this special place with so much history and future potential. The old and the new worlds are co-mingled here. We breakfast in the street on food cooked on the back of a bicycle and then go looking for a driver. He’ll be here some where along this little bit of road. As we walk along, we are reminded again of how we are seen as being quite exotic here in this remote part of China. There can’t be too many foreigners like us around these parts. This is made obvious to us by a giggle of teenage girls who point and talk about us as we pass. Suddenly, a couple of them run along after us and then past us for a few metres. Once out in front, they quickly turn and take our photo on their phones. Then look nonchalantly straight past us, into the distance, back down the street, as if they are just looking back along the street as if there is nothing unusual going on, just as you do every day! Then, as we get level with them, they turn sideways and snap our image again, but this time in profile, from side on. They run back giggling to their friends to look at the images and chatter and laugh. I turn and wave at them and they wave back, then burst into chatter and laughter once again. We have made their morning more interesting!

We are looking for our amazingly honest driver from the other day. The one who returned Leo’s wallet full of money. We want him to drive us on this last leg of our journey. He was so honest. We find him in a cafe on the corner. A few days ago we paid him Y80 for 4 hours. Today he wants Y200 for 2 hours. I don’t hesitate in agreeing. He was honest enough to return the wallet, which he could easily have ‘forgotten’ to do. After-all, “to get rich is glorious” in China! Or so he has been told. And that windfall wallet, would have been an easy start for him towards glory. But he didn’t and in so doing restored my faith in the goodness of people. So I thank him and think that the Y200 is like a reward for goodness. He’s a nice guy, and I like him. Even though I can’t tell him.

I smile. He knows.

So now I’m finally back home again.

It’s good to see The Lovely again and be back in my own familiar life. My own home, my family, my bed. I’ve only been away a few weeks, but there is so much that needs to be done. I was busy before I left. Now that I’m back, the work load seems to have multiplied. First, I need to help The Lovely catch up with house work, then, the weeding of the garden and we have several weekend workshops booked over the next few weeks of winter. She has done one while I was away, with the help of our good friend Val, and the next one starts today. So it’s up early to get the portable wood-fired kilns out onto the site. I have built 3 new portable wood fired kilns since we last did these workshops, this time, a year ago. They are a great improvement in speed, ease, size and effort.

The day goes well and the new larger kilns perform really well, being the most productive and popular kilns on the day, turning over the work, faster than the older kilns.

Fortunately, I am home just in time to see the last few tomatoes ripen in the window sill. I cook them with a few of the last capsicums and some garlic, broccoli, pumpkin and lentils cooked in marrow bone stock.

This evening, I set about making a new batch of stock to replenish the skerrick that is left in the fridge. There is something very positive about messing about in the kitchen in the evening, fussing over the wood-fired stove, roasting, simmering, reducing a vegetable and marrow bone stock. There is something so essential and wholesome about it. It warms me! In every possible meaning of the word. In some ways, It defines my existence here, living this, positive, practical, hands-on life. Making something out of (almost) nothing. Creating capital, forestalling waste, making do and in so doing, avoiding buying some inferior mass produced product that is probably bad for you, as all the packaged stocks that I’ve seen are made up with artificial everything and loaded with a lifetimes allowance of salt to boot. What I make is a concentration of leggy vegetables that are on their way to seed, a few marrow bones and some garden herbs, reduced down with a bottle of good, local, red wine, into a firm jelly-like essence of flavour. Using a spoonful of this home-made delight beats using a stock cube of unknown origin and content.

There is a massive frost in the morning. Everything is pure white and crunchy under-foot. This is bad. It will kill off a lot of sensitive plants that were struggling on in the near absolute cold, but it is also very good! It will help kill off all the over-wintering fruit flies and while it is at it, it will ensure that we will get a better crop of apples and pears. Old stone-fruit species, especially apples, need to have a few frosts over the winter to ‘chill’ and stimulate the flower buds and make them fertile, come the spring.

It’s winter and the citrus harvest is now reaching maturity on the trees. There are lemons, Myer and Eureka, plus ’lemonade’ lemons. Then there are ruby-red grape fruit and oranges. Plus tangelos and bitter Italian chinottos. Lastly, there are Tahitian and kaffir limes. They all go in together in a radical seasonal mix of flavour and colour.

I try some new ideas about making marmalade. I make marmalade every year and I always like to try a new variation on the theme. You never know what you might learn. The recipe that I have evolved over the past 4 decades has changed so much that I don’t know what it was when I first started out. I use about 1kg of mixed fruit and use only the juice squeezed from that fruit as any liquid in the mix. I like to peel out all the fibrous pith from the fruit after juicing, so that I mostly use the coloured peel with just a bit of white on the inside. This is mixed with 300g of sugar and boiled and stirred for an hour. It’s pretty easy and quick, so i can get 4 or 5 batches done during a session. This makes about a dozen small jars. Up until today, I didn’t really know what the recipe was, so this time I separated out all the parts of the fruit and weighed them before cooking. So now I know.

1 kg of mixed citrus breaks down into;

200g of peel

460g of juice

275g of white fibrous pith into the compost

65g of pips and other discards

Put the peel, juice and 300g of sugar into the pan and boil while stirring for an hour.

That’s it, pour into hot sterilised jars straight from the oven, 10 mins at 120oC. cap with lids that have been simmered for 10 mins at a low rolling simmer. They will ‘pop’ after 15 mins to let you know that they are now vacuum sealed and good for storage for the coming year.

Confession!

I don’t boil and stir for an hour. I just don’t have the time for it. For the past decade I’ve been using the ‘jam’ setting in the bread maker machine. We have a bread maker machine and have had one for the past 20 odd years. It’s one of the few kitchen gadgets that we own. We have even worn the first one out! But we never make bread in it! We use it for making dough, which we then roll out into bread rolls or a plaited loaf, which we bake in the wood stove, or in this case to make marmalade. It works a treat. The best part is that it leaves you free to get other things done, while it ‘minds’ the jam and it never forgets to stir, or lets it burn or stick. It even rings a bell to let you know that it’s time to bottle.

Winter is the time for marmalade on toast for breakfast with a warm bowl of milky coffee. So french! We talk and plan the days jobs ahead. Wood splitting for the up coming stoneware wood firing is high on the list.

Working hard to make money, takes so much time, that there isn’t anytime left to enjoy the life that I want to live. So I decided a long time ago that it was best to try to live with an absolute minimum of money and have a lot more time for having fun and being more in control of my everyday life. When you get used to doing most things for yourself and making do, you find that you need less money. I guess that one reason is that I’m so tired by night time that I just don’t feel like going out.

This mentally focussed but physically demanding existence has it’s contentments, but non of them are money.

Best wishes

Steve

Back from the Lip

Posted on 07/06/2015 by hotnsticky

We prepare to leave the realm of our Colonel Kurtz of Tenmoku. We kurtzy, as a kurtesy and take our leave. But before we leave the valley completely, we want to spend a day visiting the contemporary potteries that still practice the forgotten art here in this little remote valley. They are reviving the old style here and dragging the lost art back from the brink. Re-inventing it as they need to as they go.

There a still a few potteries here and there around the area, a few either side of the valley and another over the river, plus several in the nearest town. They are all making contemporary interpretations, if not replicas of the old wares. None of them have really worked out how to do the most difficult and rarest styles. Even though they have the exact same raw materials and clays right here on site. We keep on finding the same purple, shale-like material, piled up in great heaps.

The best pots were so very rare, that we couldn’t even identify any broken pieces of shards in among the millions that litter the various sites. Even though our very own Kurtz took us to the actual site that he says was the place identified in the old records. However, we have no way of cross referencing this piece of information and there is no real difference in the nature of the shards here that differentiates this site from some of the others.

We also visit the site of the ‘Royal Patronage Kiln’, The tenmokus made here were incised under the foot, with the mark of the emperor. Something to do with death or taxes! However, this site is also pretty much the same as some of the others. All traces of inscribed foot ring shards have been thoroughly worked over and removed for sale elsewhere long ago. However Kurtz finds and shows us a piece of wadding, that is impressed with the royal mark in the negative, from the foot ring that it supported. He immediately pockets it. Kurtz seems to be laying claim to this site too. Perhaps his family own it? Or have some connection with it. I really can’t determine any detailed information from our ‘charades’.

What there is here is an amazing little piece of information that is quite unexpected. Leo will have to present a paper on this and publish it to get some cred for it in the academic world. ‘Kurtz’ seems to be indicating that we can keep the shard from here, as he seems to own it??? Not too sure about this. Still, we take loads of photographs and record what we can of what we have found. This is a blog and not a peer-reviewed paper. So I’ll leave it there. Conrad would have had more to say on the matter I’m sure. But I’m not Conrad. Our Colonel Kurtz seems to rule in this remote valley, all the way ‘up-river’. And how appropriate it is that he should dress in a US Army camouflage uniform? But instead of finding Conrad’s ivory trader, we find that he’s a blackware trader. It’s not quite the same. In fact the difference is black and white!

All the contemporary potteries that we visit are making tea wares, mostly small tea cup bowls. We are given one, at each of the potteries that we visit. These are small, low value, items around here. But we are very appreciative of the gift and also for the ability to be able to walk around the pottery and ‘take it all in’!

Most of the workshops are quite small and very modest. Everyone of them except one, is using either an automated jigger/jolly machine or a rotor head. We only got to see one place with wheels and throwers. Perhaps this is because the product is sold quite cheaply?

Only two workshops had wood fired kilns and both were the long, inclined single chamber dragon kiln style with multiple doors along the tunnel for ease of stacking. In the valley, there is one site that has been protected from vandals and looters by enclosing it in a fence with an impressive gate.. This kiln appears to have been a tunnel kiln of a similar kind. There are half a dozen sites around the valleys edge, so there must have been a number of kilns here, but they appear to have all been erased by the looters over the centuries.

They were packing the kiln at one pottery. Still using saggars for everything and they were getting very nice results too. There is an enormous quantity of thinly split wood stacked along the kiln. It is very impressive. I wish that I owned it! Not that I wish that I had cut, split and stacked it all. I don’t. I’m finding it hard to keep up the wood supply to our own, kitchen slow combustion cooker, lounge room fire, pottery pot belly stove and wood fired kiln. It’s enough.

The real problem here is me. I attempt to do everything myself. Nobody else is so silly. They are all specialists. There is diversification of labour and skill sets. You don’t attempt to learn how to do it, you just play your own small part in the system and buy the rest! Just give in and buy everything, whatever you need. This is the age of consumerism and conspicuous consumption. It’s not what I aspire to, so I have to deal with my own problems that I create for myself in choosing this engaged life.

I have managed to cope with this issue of wearing myself out over the last couple of decades, as I’ve aged, by finding and restoring old bits of machinery that would make the hard work a little bit easier. Machines like rock crushers and hydraulic wood splitters, but now, even using them to do the really tough work. I’m still finding it a bit tiring.

We rejoice in our good fortune and the good will of all those around us who have helped us along on this journey ‘up-river’ into the Heart of Tenmoku Darkness, to stalk the wild tenmoku in its native state and natural surroundings. We have drunk our last cup of green tea from the lip of the tenmoku bowl in its rightful place. Separating lip from lip, I return the bowl to the table. This journey is almost over.

We decide to celebrate with a smack-up meal in one of the little food-sellers shops along the road.

You guessed it, more jowls and bowels – with chilli, Yum!

Best wishes from Marlow and Willard returning from the lip of the Heart of Darkness

Be Careful What You Wish For!

Posted on 23/05/2015 by hotnsticky

Only a few weeks ago, just after Easter. The Lovely and I were driving back from Canberra, our Nations Capital. It’s a little over a two-hour drive up the freeway. It’s pretty boring but fortunately not too long. I was thinking out loud and said to Janine. “You know, I should try and go back to China and do a little more research into the original bai-tunze porcelain stone that they have worked on and developed for over a thousand years now. I should go back to the Fragrant Garden Studio where I worked a decade ago and make some bowls out of their native stone. That would be a good project. I could exhibit them along-side my own native porcelain stone pots.” The Lovely just nodded and said something like. “Yeah. Go ahead, that sounds good.”

Then two days later, I got an email from China inviting me to take part in a Tea Bowl Exhibition in Fuzhou, China, all expenses paid!

Be careful what you wish for!

How could I say No? Not only that, but I had recently been appointed as an external supervisor to a PhD student studying at the The Australian National University in Canberra, who is researching the origins of the southern oil spot tenmoku tradition of glazes in China. He wanted me to meet him in China and to undertake a research trip to the original sites. This hadn’t worked out last year, but now was perfect timing for such an investigation.

We set about planning it all. After the exhibition was over, a week in Jingdezhen for me to do my porcelain research and then a week in Jian to do the tenmoku research. It all fell into place in a week!

Then a shock message that the exhibition had been cancelled. Such a shame! But I had made other plans and was primed to carry them all out. I decided to go anyway, pay my own ticket and my colleague was also suitably inclined. We’d done all the prep and made all the other bookings, so we decided to go anyway, We had made lots of connections and arrangements, So off we go.

We fly into Beijing and wait for our connection to Jingdezhen. Beijing is a very large airport. I suppose that I’m looking at a post-olympic, trophy, prestige building, meant to impress and it does! While wandering around the airport looking for the domestic terminal sign, I see this sign, that tells me that I am here!. So helpful! I already know that I’m here. I just don’t know where ‘here’ actually is. This terminal is over a kilometre long. I need to know where here is, in regard to everything else and as the sign has no reference to any map, it is just about useless.

you are here!

We arrive in Jingdezhen and make our way to the hostel that will be our home for the next week or so. The first thing that we do is to check out the surroundings and get our bearings. It’s been a decade since I was last there working and a lot has changed in that time. Ten years ago, this part of the city was all two-story, old buildings. Now there are so many astonishingly tall, high-rise apartments creeping out from the city into the suburbs. My old view from the back balcony of my flat, that I shared with quite a few factory workers at that time, has completely changed. I find it hard to recognise much. Slowly I re-familiarise myself with the old laneways and paths and get my bearings.

My old house, where I lived ten years ago, with the upstairs, roof-top balcony, that was actually the kitchen and bathroom area,

In 2005 I could just walk out onto the main street outside the pottery precinct gate and find any number of little street-food kitchens set up and cooking an amazing range of delicious street food. I could go to a different little mobile kitchen, based on a bicycle or possibly a tricycle every morning and never repeat myself and never get more than a few hundred metres from home. I love the food in China. In this part of China the food tradition is of the hot and spicy kind. Every meal seems to be cooked with chilli, even breakfast. I love it!

Chilli in breakfast, lunch and dinner, grits and jowls and bit of bowels, with steamed greens. Yum!

In those days, all the old homes didn’t really have kitchens and bathrooms as we understand the terms. Often, the sink was out in the laneway and shared with 2 or three other houses. The only cooking facility available to most people in those old dwellings at that time was a pressed coal dust briquette, that was lit in a small circular stove, possibly a recycled 20 litre vegetable oil tin. This contraption would take one pot on top and burn for a very long time, possibly an hour or more. No one would get up and light a full briquette in the morning to boil an egg or make a cup of tea and leave the stove burning in an unattended house. such a waste of money and heat, and possibly dangerous too!

These briquettes are made from low-grade coal with lots of clay in it. This poor cool is powdered and then pressed into a circular block with extruded holes through it to help it burn efficiently. when its spent and all the coal is burnt out, what is left is a soft, bisque fried clay block. Out in the street there was a steady stream of working men and women stopping off on their way to work to buy a few hot dumplings or a steamed bun. They were usually riding bicycles or possibly motor scooters. There wasn’t a peak hour in those days, as there weren’t so many cars and the cars that there were, were all fairly small and compact copies of Japanese ‘bongo’ vans. The miniature brick on wheels design.

Well everything has changed. There is a peak hour now! There are loads of new cars on the street and they are big ones, just like our standard family sedans. Loads of them and they are so big. It’s hard to find many bicycles any more, even motor cycles and motor scooters have almost been phased out in favour of silent, clean electric motor scooters. A lot of people live in modern high-rise now with conventional western kitchens and bathrooms. They have electricity for micro waves and electric jugs. People can cook their own tea and dumplings, or noodles before driving off to work in their car. All this convenience, has meant the disappearance of many of the street food sellers. They are still there, but in little clusters in off-road open spaces. We were able to find a different place to eat each morning, but some were so well hidden off the beaten track, that we wouldn’t have found them without being tipped off to their location. (A little like Canberra really!)

All the old industrial high-rise is being replaced with new high-rise.

This place is in the midst a very severe period of renewal and change. Most people seem to be looking prosperous and happy There are innumerable little private workshops springing up everywhere. Wherever there is an old empty building, someone has moved in and done it up and it’s now a shop out front and a workspace out the back. Ten years ago, these buildings were mostly empty or just used for storage.

We set to work the next morning and I make 40 bowls on the small pot boards available to me. I make 4 different shapes. I get them out into the sun hoping to be able to start turning them as soon as possible. We are here in the rainy season, so things are slow to dry, but I get most of them over onto their rims by evening. I don’t have the luxury of a slow, even, controlled drying. The next morning I start to turn the forms so as to rough out the forms to reduce the weight at the base and speed the drying. These one-stone porcelain bodies are quite non-plastic, but I must say that this particular one is very good compared to my own ball-milled ‘Joadja’, ground stone body back at home. The difference being that where as mine is made from a hard, glassy, dense ‘aplite’ or fast cooled granite-like material. This material here in Jingdezhen is a weathered sericite mica and develops a lot more plasticity. Even so, you can’t turn bodies like this when they are leather hard. They just chip and tear. These ‘clays’ , if it’s possible to call them that, need to be molly-coddled a bit and turning is best done at the almost bone dry stage. This allows a better smoother finish, but creates a lot of dust. In Japan, they use a vacuum fan in front of the wheel to create a negative pressure to remove the dust for the workers safety. Here there is no such concern. OH&S is a distinctly ‘western’ luxury concept at work.

I finish all the turning and get them all out into the sun to dry on the third day. I cull them all down to 20, then another cull down to 12. That is all I will be able to carry out on the plane in my back pack. We plan to raw glaze them tomorrow and then into the stoneware kiln the next day, fired over night and unpacked the next morning. We are due to fly out at lunch time. We are cutting it fine, but it is doable. And we do it. It all runs like a Swiss watch. We are greatly aided by Liu Danyun, The daughter of Master Liu, the owner of the Fragrant Garden International Ceramics Studio, she is most helpful in every way and does all our translating, phone calls, bookings and other organising for us. She is a wonderful friend !

Although there has been enormous change over the ten years since I first came here, with so many technological advances, Some things haven’t changed very much. Pots are still moved from studio to studio and studio to kiln on wheel barrows, but change is catching up there too! Not very many studios have their own kiln, most places still use the public kilns, and there are quite a few to choose from in the pottery precinct. You probably don’t have to move your work more than 100 metres to find a kiln to fire them, a glaze workshop to glaze them, a box maker to fit them or a crate maker to package them securely for transport.

Although they now have sophisticated spray booths, and the use of dust masks is more common. They don’t always were the mask or turn on the fan and water pump!

The privately owned and run kiln firing services are amazing. These kilns are packed and fired every day, with one trolley being packed while the other is in the kiln firing. They seem to crack the door open at very hight temperatures, even while there is still a decent, strong, bright glow in the kiln, so as to crash cool it.

Where ever you go there are pots stacked out on the street to catch the breeze and some sunshine to speed up the drying. The pavement is also used as additional studio space in fine weather. Even the street and train line is used as extra workshop drying areas. Nothing is wasted!

I’m quite in awe of these people’s ability for hard work, creativity and efficiency in some very difficult circumstances. It’s such an inspiring environment. I don’t want to come and live and work like this permanently, but I’m so very grateful that I have the chance to come and work here on these occasions and experience this life. It grounds me and makes me realise how lucky I am.

Best wishes

from Steve in Jingdezhen

A world tour of our garden, in 3 meals.

Posted on 03/05/2015 by hotnsticky

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, a world tour of our garden, in 3 meals.

Gardening is a very enjoyable activity. It gets us out into the fresh air, it’s good exercise and It provides most of all we eat each day. As the autumn progresses towards winter, the cooler weather encourages us to seek out more warming cooked meals. We indulge ourselves in reflecting on the people and places that inhabit our collective memories. Our conversations trigger memories of these people and places. Fond recollections of some past events and friends remembered through pots and food. We don’t attempt to make Italian, Spanish, Japanese or any other type of national cuisine. We make Australian food. Real food, home-grown, eaten fresh where possible, but when preserved, we do it without any added chemicals or preservatives. Preserved in glass jars, not plastic. and all home cooked. We just take the influences that we recall and weave them into our dietary choices, them combine our thoughts with what we actually have available to us from the garden.

This is what happened yesterday, in between, potting, gardening, wood cutting, kiln building and building maintenence. There is time for everything, in its own time.

For breakfast I cooked eggs in passata with a few cloves of garlic warmed in good olive oil first. The passata I used on this occasion was made from little yellow, pear-shaped tomatoes that I preserved a couple of months ago, at the height of summer. The passata is heated up and the eggs cracked in and covered to gently simmer until the whites are firm. I served it up on a piece of rye sour dough toast.

I must say that it was just right for a cool, misty, foggy, morning breakfast. A little cracked pepper makes it perfect.

We don’t quite lick the plates, but there is certainly nothing left.

For lunch I made and hotch potch from the left over baked vegetables that Nona Nina made for last nights dinner. Brussel sprouts, parsnip, leeks, carrots, pumpkin, onions, zucchini and beetroot. We had that garnished with preserved spicy plum sauce from our summer orchard fruit.

These left-overs were added to some chorizo sausage, our garlic, olives and home-made dried tomatoes from the summer excess. A lovely way to use up everything that we have in different and interesting combinations. We haven’t bought any meat since Xmas as far as I can recall. We aren’t vegetarians, but we don’t eat a lot of meat. So this is our little indulgence, veggie hot-pot with chorizo. Hot, spicy and nicely warming.

For dinner we decided to have Gyoza. I had previously bought 500g of lean pork and asked the butcher to mince it for me. I divided it into 4 parts and froze 3 of them for later. The 125g of pork mince is just the right amount to make gyoza for two. We fry the pork with lots of garlic in olive oil and some finely diced garden veggies. Then Ninako fills the small parcels with the mixture and I simmer and steam them in a sauce made from the last of the small red and yellow tomatoes from the garden, a few beans and some chillies. When this is reduced down, it makes a delicious simmer sauce.

It all mellows out very nicely. 7 each is just the right number of gyoza dumplings for one hungry potter. This sauce, although not culturally authentic, is very well matched to what we are enjoying, and most importantly it is entirely ours, from our garden. This is our Australian ‘gyoza’ influenced local dumpling experience. I’ll have another go at it some time in the future, and I’m sure to enjoy that too. Nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect and nothing lasts. This meal certainly didn’t!

It’s such an indulgence to tour the world of our recollections with such wholesome and tasty food, and almost entirely from our own produce.

We are very lucky people and I am grateful.

I have arranged to donate one of my recent bowls from my Watters Gallery exhibition to the fund-raiser appeal for the Nepalese victims of the recent earthquake. The pot will be auctioned soon. Please see below;

I believe you will have heard about the recent devastating earthquake in Nepal.

With the help of Vicki Grima, The Journal of Australian Ceramics editor, I am organising a fundraising project called CLAY FOR NEPAL (#clayfornepal15) to raise funds for the Nepalese people affected.

The first part of the project is an AUCTION of ceramics from around the world.

In conjunction with the AUCTION, Adriana Christianson, has offered to help me organise a BUY NOW STORE offering more affordable items for immediate purchase.

Both events will be happening from Friday 15 to Sunday 17 May 2015.

AUCTION: www.stores.ebay.com.au/clayfornepal

BUY NOW STORE: www.clayfornepal.bigcartel.com

PREVIEW of available works for both events here

Thank you for your support,

Vipoo Srivilasa

contact :

AUCTION: vipoo@vipoo.com

BUY NOW STORE: mail@adrianachristianson.com

All funds collected, less any event expenses (eBay and Paypal fees), will be donated to Oxfam, Nepal Earthquake Relief Appeal.

Vipoo Srivilasa is authorised by Oxfam Australia to collect funds for the benefit of Oxfam.

Vipoo is a very nice and thoughtful bloke who has taken on this endeavour of his own volition. It’s a credit to him and I am proud to be associated with the enterprise. Janine and I have donated cash through the Red Cross, but this is a way that we can do more, by doing what we do best. Which is making beautiful, thoughtful, meaningful objects.

Best wishes

from

Stevbu and Ninako, gardeners of local produce and international flavours.

The Luxury of Frugal Simplicity

Posted on 24/02/2015 by hotnsticky

We’ve been making wine, making clay, making kilns, making pots, making preserves and in general making a living, in all the various and diverse ways that we have grown into during this big long experiment called life.

As the last few weeks of summer are slipping away, the days get shorter and the plants are adjusting accordingly. This last week, we have been harvesting the red grapes and the yellow quinces.

In the past we have tried making wine from our Isabella/fragolino grapes, but it was never very good, due to the fact that we are not at all skilled at making wine, but also because these grapes are not really suited to wine making, so we have taken to bottling the dark red grape juice. This is the very best way to appreciate these grapes. We have also grown both Cabinet Sauvignon and shiraz, which are much better for making wine, but they need a lot of work to protect them from mildew. I refuse to use anything poisonous, restricting myself to only organic treatments. So this meant regular applications of Bordeaux spray, which is copper carbonate and lime mixed together. This works, but has to be applied after every rain, as it is water based and washes off. Long term use can lead to a build-up in the soil, so I decided to let them find there own way to survive without spraying. They didn’t! So no shiraz grapes this wet year.

However, the Isabella/fragolino hybrid is totally immune to Phytophthora root rot and leafy mildew. So no sprays are needed, perfect! These grapes are only good for juice, but the juice is of excellent flavour and the way that we have developed to extract the juice brings out exceptional depth of colour and flavour. We have tried the more traditional crushing and pressing, but this only results in a clear/pale pink juice. Partial fermentation to make ‘summer wine’. A semi fermented blend of partially fermented sweet juice and a little alcohol from the fermentation, results in a pale pink, cloudy, rose style. This is very nicely spritzig and tangy on the tongue but we have developed a better way of improving it to what we believe is an outstanding level of density of flavour and colour.

The red colour of wine comes from the skins which contains, amongst other things, anthrocyanins. These complex chemicals are thought to be quite beneficial to your health. But simply pressing the juice out of their skins only results in a white juice or wine. Have you ever thought how clear champagne is made from pinot noir red grapes? The clear juice is quickly squeezed out of the red grapes and separated from their skins so that no contact colouration can occur. If the grape juice is left in contact with the skins, the alcohol that develops in the wine ‘must’ as it ferments starts to dissolve the red colour. Partial contact results in a ‘rose’ light red colour, but full fermentation on the skins produces a red wine. Wine makers have developed a technique called ‘plunging the cap’ which involves pushing the red skins down into the fermenting ‘must’ to encourage the contact and colour extraction. This is done several times a day, for a week or two, as long as the fermentation lasts.

As we are not making wine, but only juice. Miss Penfold Grange King decided to try heating the juice to sterilize it for bottling, but along the way found by accident that the colour improved as well. So now we don’t really crush the grapes in the normal way. We carefully pick all the ‘berries’ off the grape bunches and separate the stems and any unripe grapes, as these can give a sour acidic flavour to the juice. We also separate any living protein from the bunches as well. In industry this is called “MOG” material other than grapes, and a lot of it, slaters, spiders, caterpillars and especially snails, can pass through the system and separators, just like grapes, if they are the same size. However, It doesn’t seem to affect the finished wine from industrial scaled production wineries.

We take the time to carefully separate all of this by hand about 20 kilos at a time and then put the grapes in big boilers and heat them . initially to sterilize the juice for preservation, but we have found that a few minutes of simmering and some squashing using a potato masher, produces a very rich, red, dense grape juice of immense flavour and colour. It seems that anthrocyanins are also extracted by heat just as with alcohol. After the colour has been extracted by this heating, we drain off the skins and pips through a large kitchen sieve, pressing it a little by placing a stack of plates on top, then filling glass jars taken straight from the oven with ‘pop top’ lids simmered in hot water. As the bottles cool. the lids are sucked down and sealed making a loud ‘pop’ noise as they vacuum seal.

This juice keeps for up to a year in these sealed bottles. Miss Penfold Grange King has found lots of ways to cook with this preserved juice over the years. She makes jelly, by re-heating with some gelatine and a little lemon juice and even some zest occasionally. This year we have also made some summer wine from this improved and concentrated rich red grape juice. it’s absolutely fantastic. If you haven’t ever tried some of this stuff. it is an amazing way to preserve grape juice. Except, as summer wine it isn’t preserved at all, just drunk. we make a batch every few days to replace the last batch, keeping the ferment going, restarting the new batch off the lees of the last one. We make it in 4 litre glass fermenting jars. It’s an ongoing process that lasts as long as the grape crop.

Every year we try something a little different, some other way of dealing with what we have, always trying to find a better way to get the most out of our home grown produce. This year, amongst other things, we have experimented with preserving our quince crop by cooking them in this wonderfully rich, dense and colourful red grape juice which is brim full of flavour.

Quinces need to be cooked with a little bit of sugar. In the past I have used pure white and deadly as well as local honey, but this year we have decided to use the sweetness of our grape juice to provide the fructose to bring out the luscious red colour of the cooked quinces.

I bring the quartered and peeled quinces to the boil and then switch them off. Because they are so fresh, they don’t need to be cooked for too long, otherwise they will go all mushy. While the quinces are coming up to the boil. I bring all the quince peelings and cores and pips up to boil for a few minutes, and simmer for a while. The skins and pips are full of pectin, so boiling them dissolves this pectin. I drain off the pectin liquor into a smaller sauce pan and continue to reduce tha pectin sauce further.

I place the quinces in a baking tray with a few cloves, a 5 star anise, a cinnamon stick and the zest and juice of a lemon. I cut the spent lemon in the baking tray as well and pour the hot grape juice over them and place them in the oven on low to cook a little more. As soon as the pectin liquor is reduced to half, I pour it over the baking quinces and bake them for another half hour. It reduces to a jelly-like, rich, red, fragrant syrup.

Perfect with a little cream or icecream, or both.

Yum. You don’t know what you are missing if you haven’t tasted something like this.

We may not have much cash flow, but by gosh we eat well. We just couldn’t afford to pay to eat this quality and range of gourmet foods if we were working for money.

Best wishes from Miss Penfold Grange and her Maximillion dollar value Schubert

The luscious excess of the summer garden

Posted on 13/02/2015 by hotnsticky

The luscious excess of the summer garden

Breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus desert.

We have been experimenting with a few new ways of dealing with our excesses from the garden. We have our favourites that we love to cook every season with all the usual suspects as they front up in quantity. It’s just amazing how much I look forward to that first tomato of the season to get ripe enough to pick and eat, right there in the garden. It truly explodes in the mouth with sweet, acidity. Such a flavour. Then all those vitamins that I am obviously in need of, because I crave that first tomato so much. Just brushing the leaves of the tomato plants while weeding is nostalgic and gives me the Pablov’s Dog reaction. i can’t wait. I’m craving a fresh tomato after 6 months without having any. However, after a month of tomatoes with everything, I seem to have enough of the vitamins and minerals that tomatoes offer, and they lose some of their charm. They are still fantastically delicious, but there is no longer any urgency to eat them. They just become part of the menu landscape. In fact, so much so, that while I’m weeding and watering the plants, I try to avoid brushing the leaves, as the smell is no longer appetising, but slightly off-putting even. What is this reaction? How does it work? My body is telling me what I need to eat and when I’ve had enough. Time to move on, try something different.

The same can be said for zucchinis, capsicum and aubergines as well I suppose, but not with the same urgency.

After we have cooked and eaten all the usual favourite dishes a few times, we start to consider other ways of thinking about what we have and how we can be creative with it.

Breakfast of stewed fruit and yoghurt. Today its blood plums or fresh prunes.

It’s always interesting to see what other people have found to do with summer vegetables. The following recipe is from Andrew McConnel, from his page in the recently launched “The Saturday Paper” This is a new Australian newspaper launched by Morry Schwartz this time last year. We were foundation subscribers, as I have been to ’The Quatertly Essay’ and the ‘The Monthly’. I think that it’s important to support creative ventures, and anything that may help to subvert the dominant paradigm can’t be a bad thing. The recipe for Zucchini salad is from the 7th of Feb issue.

Zucchini Salad and ricotta

The lovely made some fresh ricotta and served it with a few thinly sliced zucchinis. This is a lovely fresh salad of thinly sliced raw zucchinis. Slice the zuchs and season with pepper (plus salt if you use it), then dress with some torn basil leaves and lemon zest, + its juice and some olive oil. Evenly spread the fresh warm ricotta over the top in little lumps and a few lightly roasted pine nuts.

After making the ricotta, there is a lot of whey still left over. This is good to feed to the chickens or a pig – if you happen to be fattening one up at the time, or to make a batch of scones?. Ms ‘one brick’ Einstein has a brilliant idea and decides to make a whey pudding by adding a little bit of vanilla bean paste, some sugar and a little gelatine to the warm whey. It sets in the fridge to a jelly that is surprisingly good as a breakfast or dessert option.

Lightly steamed capsicums and garlic served warm and topped with fresh ricotta

Sliced, fresh warm tomatoes picked straight from the garden 5 minutes earlier and served on a bed of oak leaf lettuce.

Mixed small tomatoes, finely sliced fresh red onion and grated zucchini salad, served with crispy toasted seeds,(sunflower and pumpkin) dressed with lemon juice. This salad will be going on our list of ‘must do more often’. Really nice mix of flavours and textures.

Served with cold potatoes cheese, fresh basil pesto and green leaves.

Zucchini fritters. Grate a few small young zucchinis and mix with a little flour and an egg, season with salt and pepper, some coriander leaves, parsley, a hint of chilli and finely chopped shallots. Fry in a little olive oil till golden on both sides.

Mixed summer veggie fritters. Grate zucchinis with mashed, steamed and cooled, waxy potatoes, sweet corn nibblets, sliced, steamed French beans, finely chopped capsicum, parsley and Thai basil. Mix with egg and flour and fry in a shallow pan with some extra virgin olive oil. Season to taste.

Baked capsicums stuffed with ricotta mixed with olive, garlic and dried tomato tepinade. roasted beetroot dip, grated zucchinis with lemon juice and pepper, sweet corn on the cob, fresh capsicum and cold potato with tomatoes and olives.

Lightly steamed french beans served with home-made spicy tomato passata. We also have beans like this served in yoghurt with garlic.

Baked, marinated ocean trout fragments with udon noodles and seasonal veggies. Marinate the fish in some soy, ginger, olive oil and lemon juice for a few hours. Steam, bake or Pan fry the fish in it’s marinade. Meanwhile, boil the udon buckwheat noodles and steam the fresh veggies, beans, broccoli, colli, zucchini chunks, whatever is at hand on the day. Toss the veggies through the drained noodles and serve with a few torn-up fresh Shiso leaves on the side and dress with a mix of mirin, sesame seed oil and meso.

Baked mediterranean vegetables with cumin, Roughly chop up what ever is in the garden by way of Mediterranean vegetables. Zucchinis, tomatoes, beans, aubergines, onion etc. pour a little olive oil into the baking dish and rub it through all the vegetables with your hands. sprinkle some cumin over it and bake in a moderate oven till tender. This is a Nigel Slater recipe that The Lovely has transposed to suit what we have. The cumin isn’t something that I would have thought of, but it works and is really nice. It’s no longer a ratatouille sort of dish, and is suddenly transported to another continent.

Ratatouille variations. Slice egg-plant, tomatoes, capsicums and onions liberally sprinkled with mashed garlic and plenty of torn basil leaves. Pour over a jar of home-made passata, sugo sauce and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour or so. Crush a few more cloves of fresh garlic and sprinkle over the top before serving. It’s tangy and gorgeous.

Serve with some chopped parsley and a little grated parmigiano.

Summer vegetable frittata. Brown some onions and garlic in olive oil, add in chopped tomato, aubergine, capsicum, french beans, zucchini and cold steamed potato slices. Pour over the whisked eggs and grate cheese on top. cook for a few minutes on the stove top and then transfer to the grill. Best to use a flat flan pan or very shallow fry pan for this dish. One with a metal handle that can go under the grill. Grill till the cheese turns golden.

Serve with chunky zucchini steamed with fresh mint leaves. It’s just another way of using up more of the buggers.

Serve with a grating of fresh pepper.

Almond friand cake embedded with slices of fresh pear and topped with local pecans

Poached pears with amaretto and served with greek yoghurt

Quinces poached in fresh pressed red grape juice.

Peel and core the quinces, place in a large baking pan cover with fresh pressed red grape juice and slow cook for at least 4 hours in a slow oven, untill they soften and turn red.

We are not fooling ourselves. There isn’t anything new here. This isn’t fancy food. It’s just simple honest Post Modern Peasant food picked from our garden and cooked within hours, if not minutes of harvest. A good percentage of it is even eaten raw in the garden while we are harvesting. Nothing could be fresher or more wholesome. Nearly everything on these plates is home-grown and home-made – even the plates.

Best wishes from two well-fed potters

Resistance is Fertile

Posted on 10/02/2015 by hotnsticky

The summer garden is being very productive and keeping us busy. The heat is back and the rain has largely stopped, so I had to water the garden today. I have been building kilns these last few weeks, more or less full-time, but there are always things to do in the garden and it’s a great entertainment and relaxing break from working on kilns to be able to just walk out of the workshop and spend half an hour with the vegetables as a break. I really enjoy this attempt of ours of the last 40 years to try to achieve some independence and self-reliance, but I still have to earn some money to pay all the rates, regos and insurances that are necessary to be able to live and work here. There are no free lunches in this garden. We know a lot of potters here, but non that makes a living solely from what they can make and sell. Everyone has a second income from part-time work, or a partner with an income who helps to support them. We have both worked part-time to support our artistic ‘habit’. Building kilns and running firing workshops from here are our current income support schemes for our self-reliance. Selling our work makes only a quarter of our income.

The Queen of Quince has started on the late summer preserving sessions. Potatoes, tomatoes, basil, beans, pears, apples, quince and red grapes are all coming on at the same time and have to be dealt with. I lend a hand where I can as an interesting relief from the kiln work. I usually try to keep January free of kiln orders, so that I can be 100% involved in the garden and kitchen at this busy, productive time of year. But this year, events transpired such that I have to work on a kiln to make a deadline that can’t be changed. Being adaptable and adjusting to change is a useful skill I’m told? Organic growing, nurturing, harvesting, preserving and cooking and eating our produce is the most rewarding thing that I can think of doing with my life. It is the reason that we have chosen to live out here in the bush with few services, but plenty of space, clean air and water to live out our self-reliant, creative, self-employed utopian dream. As it’s turned out, and much to my surprise, we have managed to ‘get away with it’.

I could have chosen to make something a lot more ‘commercial’ I suppose? And in a very much more efficient manner, but that just doesn’t seem to interest me. I’m not really very interested in ‘efficiency’. I rather like to spend a long time creating something really beautiful with my hands, whether its making a pot on the potters wheel, or weeding a garden bed, writing a real letter on beautiful paper by hand using an ink fountain pen, or at the current time in spending time hand carving and shaping a fire brick to fit in a specific position in the door of a kiln so that it makes a perfect door seal, with a ground face and precision interlock. Some of these firebricks are cut and shaped on 6 faces.

No-one really understands what goes into a hand-made object. It is no longer part of our Australian culture. It belongs to a time long past. However, I believe that it is important to keep skills alive. So I really do it for me. I’m completely selfish in this. Luckily, there are just enough people out there who are prepared to support me in persisting with this enterprise. The people who buy my kilns or come to my exhibitions have no idea of what they are looking at. “Oh yes, it’s pretty” doesn’t scratch the surface. It’s the back story to all of this that makes it special. No-one can see this in the object. It’s invisible, but the object wouldn’t exist at all without all the preparatory work and research. The research and prep are the two noughts on the price tag. Anyone can make a bowl. It’s the simplest of shapes. Nothing to it! I want to prospect, dig, crush and mill all my own materials for my pots, in just the same way that I want to grow all my own food. This isn’t a business, it’s a philosophy.

With the assistance of her friend Vicki, The Lovely has picked and juiced most of the apples, except for one tree.

The apple juice from these apples are destined to be made into cider vinegar. Tomatoes are picked every few days and reduced to sauce and vacuum sealed in ‘pop’ top glass jars for use later. The basil has been converted into pesto. The first of the pears are stewed and in the fridge for breakfast and desert fruits. We have had the first picking of the 2015 vendage and some is stored as preserved red grape juice while some of it has been left to ferment with it’s own wild yeast to be drunk as Summer Wine. Slightly spritzig, sweet, weak red wine. It’s something that we came across on road-side stalls in Europe some years ago, when travelling around in their late summer/early autumn and it’s so fantastic and relatively quick and easy to make, compared to real wine. Very refreshing and satisfying on a hot summers day.

We start by picking the low hanging fruit.

Then the higher hanging fruit

We have been supplying quinces and beans to a local restaurant in the last week as well.

Kipfler King has been planting little batches of potatoes as they start to shoot and this latest batch has come from a wire compost ring, behind the mower shed.

They are nearly all small kipflers, we steam them in bigger batches. Too much to eat at one sitting, then we cool the excess and place it in the fridge for a later time. This is not to save time or money. We do it because cold potatoes are better for you. Fresh steamed potatoes are digested straight away and go pretty quickly into your bloodstream. High GI. Once cooled however, the potato starch is converted to what is called ‘resistant’ starch or ‘butyrylated resistant starch’. It isn’t digested in the tummy or small intestine, but passes all the way to the lower intestine where it feeds the endemic gut flora that like to live there. It makes for a very fertile environment for this good gut bacteria. So, resistance is fertile, I read an article about this in New Scientist twenty years or so ago and reprised recently, I have practised it ever since. Having a healthy and fertile environment for the good gut bacteria is an excellent way to ward off colorectal cancer. I also remember reading that cooking the spuds a second time and then cooling them, converts even higher percentages of the starch into the resistant form. Providing lots of fibre where it’s needed. We don’t ever seem to get around to doing this second cooking and cooling. We already have enough to fill our days. I should change my habits, but I’m resistant.

The humble spud, not un-like revenge, is apparently, a dish best served cold.

Best wishes

from the highly resistant Steve and his Queen of Quince, the Kipfler King

Much ado about netting

Posted on 26/01/2015 by hotnsticky

We have netted all the stone-fruit trees in the orchard that still have fruit on them. We move the nets from the early trees that have finished fruiting and relocate them to the late season trees that are turning colour and ripening. Once all the early fruiting varieties are done, they no-longer need the netting. Some of these trees are getting quite old now and have gained some size. Our oldest trees are over 40 years old, however most are now 2nd generation plantings, still they need a support system that can cover trees up to 4 metres high. This means that we need to use the bigger nets that are 9 metres square.

We have figured out a way to build a frame simply out of 2 pieces of left-over polypipe tubing, tied together in the middle and spread out at right angles to form an arched support. We hammer in tomato stakes to secure the pipe to the ground and it become quite stable. The difficulty is in getting the netting over the frame. Janine ‘bowline’ King attaches a rope to one side and throws it over, then with me voicing encouragement, she hauls the netting over the frame. The polythene piping is quite smooth and slippery, so the netting travels freely over. We repeat the process for each tree with ripening fruit until we run out of nets.

The birds are so very resourceful. They have figured out that if they sit on the netting and bounce up and down on it , it will sag down until it touches some of the fruit. Then they peck at it through the netting.

This whole process of netting is fast and efficient, and we get it all done in an hour or so. There is still time in the afternoon to go to the garden and de-fuse the exploding zucchini crop. We lunch on steamed broccoli and cauliflower with a squeeze of lemon juice and a little fresh ground pepper.

As the garden is so prolific in this warm wet weather, we decide to make an egg plant parmigiana. We have lots of tomatoes and aubergines.

Tomatoes blanched and skinned, sliced and laid over the aubergines with a little olive oil, then sprinkled with torn basil leaves and crushed garlic, finally covered with a jar of our home made tomato, garlic, onion and capsicum sauce. Grate parmigiana on top and bake.

Another favourite at this time of year for a simple meal on a hot day is cold cucumber soup.

This isn’t really a recipe, more a way of thinking about using up cucumbers. It’s cooling and soothing and a little bit tangy, and you get to use up a lot of cucumbers.

Use half a dozen small, or 3 large cucumbers. Peeled and seeded if they are older and larger, but all in as they come if they are young.

Some mild onion like red or white, or even green spring onions finely chopped

A big bunch of cilantro or coriander leaves finely chopped.

A small bunch of mint leaves finely chopped.

A couple of cloves of garlic, smashed and de-papered.

Some finely chopped chilli to taste and although I don’t use salt, if you want it, add it to your our taste.

Juice of a lemon.

Put it all in the blender or food processor with half a tin of coconut milk and the same quantity of plain greek yoghurt, or just one of them, or some sour cream if that’s what you have in the fridge. You can use a blend of all three.

You can serve it with a little bit of olive oil on top and some paprika sprinkled on.

Janine mixes up the recipe each time she makes it to keep it lively and interesting, sometimes adding chopped dill, parsley or tarragon leaves. Sometimes with only yoghurt and other times with just coconut milk. It works just the same.

It’s always different and always delicious.

Half Baked

Posted on 13/01/2015 by hotnsticky

Welcome to mid-summer.

Without doing anything about it, we find ourselves now at the high point of mid-summer. It was effortless. How did we get here? Time is flying by, the days are getting shorter, but not that noticeably and the fruit is ripening on the trees, even through all this rain. This is probably the apogee of the summer heat, although it’s not that hot this year. Our maximums are in the low to mid thirties.

The Earth Mother Garden Girl has been out early, picking vegetables and returns with a wheel barrow full. She comes in with a couple of boxes full of tomatoes, capsicums, aubergines, zucchinis, and more.

I’ve spent the day cutting and folding stainless steel kiln parts. I see the bounty of summer right there in boxes on the kitchen floor and decide to make the obvious choice, ratatouille. It’s that time of year!

I start by selecting out all the bird-damaged, rain-split, sun-burnt and otherwise affected and just plain over-ripe or undersized tomatoes. Paring them down and cutting them in half. I rub them with olive oil and dress them with a sprinkling of salt, then pop them into a low oven to dry a little for a while.

For the past few days, The lovely has been thinking about doing our tax. It’s a job that we always do in Jan. Well, we try to. It has to be in by March, along with our company returns. It’s not as big a deal as it used to be. Since the introduction of the GST and quarterly BAS statements, most of it is already done. But it’s still a job that no-one likes. So My Beautiful Abacus has managed to put it off now for 2 days and as a result of this extended procrastination, she has sorted out the office, cleaned out the spare room, tidied under our bed, re-arranged the pantry and de-cluttered the kitchen table, work bench and side board. Tax time is great! The house has never looked so tidy. I think the next job on the tax-list may well turn out to be cleaning the shower grouting. Procrastination can be good!

In the kitchen the smell of the half baked tomatoes is wafting out and about the house now. I split the zucchinis, capsicums and aubergines. These are our first two aubergines of the season. I lay them all in a baking dish with some olive oil, cover them with the half baked tomatoes and dress it all with a big handful of torn basil leaves fresh from the garden, while The Lovely crushes a few cloves of garlic and spreads it about all over the mix. I tear up a few anchovies and place little bits evenly about the pan. It isn’t pretty. It’s a big jumbled mass of veggies, but it smells fantastic already and I haven’t even cooked it yet.

In the oven for half an hour to soften the veggies let it all meld in together. It fills the house with that smell of “only in summer”.

For me, ratatouille and its many variations has to be the apotheosis of summer. Good olive oil and fresh summer vegetables from the garden – beautiful! As we only eat what we grow. We can’t have this dish at any other time of the year. Aubergines are very slow to get going here. They don’t start producing until mid-summer and then fruit well into the autumn. Zucchinis on the other hand are just about past their zenith and starting their slow decline as they straggle and spread all over the place. The tomatoes haven’t reached their peak as yet, but are bearing very well for us just now. We are just starting to get enough to think about bottling them. Passata may well come before tax?

My Beautiful Abacus packs away the tax files from the kitchen table into their relevant boxes and spring folders, then transforms into a Beautiful Maitre’D and Sommelier as I plate-up the fragrant dish and grate a little parmigiana on top and some more fresh basil leaves. It’s really wonderful, if I do say so myself. It’s a great pity that I can’t convey the smell sensations to you in words. You just have to be there – or do it yourself. Half baking the tomatoes really helps to concentrate the flavour. It takes a little longer, but it’s really worth it. Once they are in the oven, you can go back to not doing the tax for a little longer. Actually, it’s a great way to extend the working day without realising it.

Best wishes from the Half Baked Steve and his Beautiful Actuary

Of cabbages and King

Posted on 01/01/2015 by hotnsticky

“The time has come the walrus said to speak of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and Kings”

Well, I have both cabbages and a King here right now, so that’s what I’m going to speak about. We are finding ways to eat the flush of red cabbage that is coming on now. Our first idea was to make Japanese okonomiyaki-inspired cabbage pancakes, they are fabulous and a great way to get through a lot of cabbage.

We don’t have a recipe, we just use what we have at the time. The main ingredient is the cabbage, finely shredded, a small amount of pan-cake batter. i.e. one egg to one table spoon full of flour. We use organic wholemeal, but you will get a lighter result with white or corn flour. I usually add some of my marrow bone and veggie stock form the freezer, but you can use water or even milk to make the pancake batter mix. Sometimes I only add two eggs without using any flour, cracking them directly into the simmering cabbage mix. Some finely sliced spring onions or a few small shallots go well in the mix.

We cook the cabbage and onion in a little oil like a stir-fry, but sometimes with the lid on the frypan for a few minutes to get the whole thing to steam and then add the batter or eggs and stir it through. This binds it all together. When it firms up a little we flip it over and do the other side. Whenever I have had this in Japan it nearly always has some sort of bacon or cured pork added in rashes on one side or cubed chunks mixed through.

As bacon, or any other cured and preserved meat isn’t all that good for you, we keep it to a minimum. But it is a tasty addition when it’s added in there. The other things that we add as the fancy takes us are; a little bit of ginger pickled in cider vinegar with some salt and honey. Ginger turns slightly pink when pickled in vinegar. This is drained and finely chopped before adding it in, or some roughly chopped home-grown and dried tomatoes preserved in oil.

When the pancake is cooked through on both sides. We serve it with a few katsuobushi bonito flakes sprinkled on top. They shimmer and wobble around on top of the hot meal as if they are alive. It’s an uncanny feeling to see your food, there on the plate, moving about.

The first time that I saw bonito flakes on a pancake, when I bought my first okonomiyaki sitting on a train platform waiting for a train in the 80’s In Japan. I hadn’t ever seen anything like it before, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was used to eating food that didn’t move around on my plate. Okonomiyaki is just so delicious that I instantly got used to it and have bought bonito flakes occasionally, when I see them for sale, ever since.

I Japan, they have a special kind of Okonomiyaki sauce. It more or less tastes like a mix of 3 parts of BBQ sauce to 1 part of Worcestershire sauce, or something a bit close to that, if you can imagine it. They also use a lot of mayonnaise as well. In fact an okonomiyaki pancake is usually decorated with lots of squiggly lines of brown and white sauce in delicate cross-hatch patterns.

These two decorative and tasty sauces seem to be essential in Japan, I have never been served an okonomiyaki without them, but for us they are optional here at home. We don’t buy BBQ sauce and only very rarely have mayonnaise, so we’ve got used to our own version of okonomiyaki inspired cabbage pancake. I did once try adding some Worcestershire sauce to some of our reduced tomato salsa, but it wasn’t the same. Presumably because we didn’t add enough salt, sugar and MSG!

I’m pretty sure that anyone who had lived in Japan for any length of time and was used to okonomiyaki just wouldn’t recognise what we cook as okonomiyaki. It doesn’t matter. To us, it’s just a great way to eat cabbage.

The second way of using a lot of cabbage is in a fresh red cabbage salad. Something that we picked up in the SE Asian restaurants of Cabramatta. The base of the salad is finely shredded cabbage, with other salad green leaves torn and tossed in as available in the season. There is no real recipe, just a fresh idea. I know that both of these aren’t really recipes, more like serving suggestions, but you can imagine.

Shred lots of fresh cabbage. It doesn’t have to be red cabbage, Chinese cabbage or Savoy works just as well. Add whatever other green salad leaves that you have growing in the garden, Lettuce, Mizuma, rocket, radicchio, red mustard leaves, etc.

Add some finely sliced Shallot or any other mild onion and some intensely flavoursome Shiso leaves. The green variety seem to have more essential oils than the red and is more aromatic, but the red one looks so terrific in the mix, especially if you are using green cabbage. Next add in plenty of very finely shredded mint leaves and some grated ginger.

The whole lot is tossed to mix it all up and is seasoned with a sprinkling of white wine vinegar. This gives it a very lively hit when it combines with the shredded ginger and finely chopped mint.

We pick the leaves in the morning and after washing them we put them in the fridge for an hour or two until lunchtime. It makes a cool, crunchy, fresh salad with lots of zing. It’s so good that we have to have seconds.

The other thing that the walrus said was about yellow-matter custard, but he didn’t give a recipe either.

Only a serving suggestion.

Goo Goo Ga-Choo!

fond regards

from the King and her Walrus

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Tonight my Fingers Smell of Garlic

Steve Harrison and Janine King's other Hot and Sticky web site

Category Archives: cooking

To Get Rich Is Glorious

Back from the Lip

Be Careful What You Wish For!

A world tour of our garden, in 3 meals.

The Luxury of Frugal Simplicity

The luscious excess of the summer garden

Resistance is Fertile

Much ado about netting

Half Baked

Of cabbages and King