Leave it to the French!

Growing up, when I was only in about 6 or 7 years old, I went to a couple of puppet shows. I loved to watch the characters that were created and listen to the story unfold. 

This inspired me, I often went home and put on my own little shows. Using a cardboard box as the stage with wooden pegs borrowed from my mothers washing line, I painted them to resemble puppets! Strings would get tangled in my fingers, it wasn't easy. My audience was normally my pet dog!

In Perth, Western Australia at the moment is the Royal de Luxe, a French mechanical marionette street theatre company. Founded in 1979 in Aix-en-Provence by Jean-Luc Courcoult, they moved from Toulouse to Nantes in 1989. The company has performed all over the world. They take different Marionettes and tell different stories for different countries, normally coinciding with a special celebration. Millions of people have watched these mechanical masterpieces.

The Perth International Arts Festival brought them here as part of the Centenary for the ANZAC celebrations. It is free for people to go and watch over three days.

The Marionettes brought here include, "The Giants", a little girl, 6 meters tall and a deep sea diver, 11 meters tall. Accompanying them are 90 company performers, 100 - strong back up crew and 400 local volunteers. They weigh a lot, cranes and other structures are used to move them. 

The story unfolds and this is what it is about

In the south-west corner of Western Australia, there were Aboriginal communities full of mysteries. One of these mysteries was a boat that had come up from out of the sand, only the prow could be seen, the rest was imprisoned in the ground.

One day, the Little Girl Giant, busy with her travels, fell into one of the Aboriginal communities of the Noongar Nation, into one of those families who are in love with the barrab (sky), the boodja (earth), the yorgam (trees) and keap (water).
She was so welcomed that she decided to stay with them for a long time.
She then witnessed the evolution and change of these inhabitants in the face of the transformation of the Australian continent. She lived there as though it were a beelya (river), full of dreams that jumped like fish.

One day, one of the community’s children brought her an old book full of drawings. It was dog-eared, crumpled, aged. It told the story of a little girl in a lighthouse full of love and sorrow, who watched soldiers leaving Australia on ships, carrying hope into lost battles. It was 1915 on the beaches of Gallipoli where the sand, reddened by the blood of men, frightened the moon. Through the book, the Little Girl Giant, as she looked at the sky, saw the past, the present and even the future.

Her gaze plunged into the centre of the battle, and she could see men disappearing, like being suddenly wiped from the earth as  an eraser would rub out on a drawing. She also saw a boat sink, snatched by a gust stronger than a cathedral and laid down on the bottom of the ocean, then an Australian diver, sent to find survivors, stuck in air bubbles. As he could not see a living soul on the seabed, he decided to stay there. Miraculously and without knowing it, he started walking and this removed the tubes and the air that filled his lungs. As he turned his head, he saw dozens of boats lying in the sand. Methodically, he entered each ship and brought dead men out of them. He dug the ground to bury each one and he continued, his muscles toned by an infernal will, so much so that around each sunken boat, there was a graveyard, like small heaps of sand without crosses, only small bellies emerging from the dust. There were hundreds like this around each boat, peaceful. With a madness which cannot be named, he continued his work. But from graveyard to graveyard, his body grew thicker, denser and without realising it, one day he was able to overturn the ships. He had monumental strength. He had quite simply grown like a child in a bath who suddenly realises that his feet are touching the taps. It was simply the story of a Giant who became big at the bottom of the sea.
In the Noongar country, the Little Girl Giant closed the last page of the book. The little Aboriginal child, his eyes full of colours, was sad then, in his gaze a rainbow flew away to the clouds.
He understood then that the Little Girl Giant had to leave to re-join her family, and when the sun lifted the horizon, he hurried to fetch his father. Whilst the stars hid in the sky, lying behind the morning light, all the people of the Noongar Nation saw a tear come from the Little Girl Giant’s eyelid. As it touched the ground, a small puddle was swallowed up by the soil. In this very spot, a tree could be seen growing in the space of two hours. From a small and barely awoken sprout, a trunk developed, full of branches with leaves that the wind enjoyed moving. It was just a tree in the boodja (country).

Then she thought that the buried boat could sail the earth to find the diver. The Aboriginals began digging and within ten days, the ship was ready on the ground. The Little Girl Giant climbed onto it and the Noongars began to sing the rain. Accompanied by the sound of the boomerangs, she crossed Western Australia. The sand made waves, the boodja filling with water. In short, she arrived in Minang boodja (Albany) from where she sent a hot air balloon, like a moon over the ocean, to call the diver. Then she headed to Whadjuk boodja (Perth).
Upon her arrival in the big city, she placed her head underwater and blew bubbles which echoed at the bottom of the ocean. Everyone knows that whales can hear sounds from 5,000 kilometres away when they call each other and that the sound of people’s footsteps on pavements reverberates to the centre of the earth.
The air bubbles that were pushed by the tide floated around the Giant Diver. With their large, small or tiny shapes, they followed one another like a convoy of boats and one after the other, they exploded in front of the Giant’s eyes. They expressed signals like Morse code: a point, a line, two points then nothing and again two lines and a point. It was a language the man of the sea knew well. He could then read sentences in which each message ended with ‘come’. No sooner had he understood he was surrounded by a tornado of fishes. They circled him faster and faster so that the swirl of force became a gust of wind. On the surface, the agitated fog started to cough so hard that a storm swallowed the bottom of the water, throwing the diver into the sky all the way into the clouds. Then, like a lost body, he fell down unconscious in Perth. The earth trembled and suddenly a great spray of water burst out of the ground between two buildings. A geyser was born, as if to greet through space the arrival of the Giants.


Keeping with the French theme, I have added one of my favourite French recipes!

Strawberry Crepes with Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients 

 1 cup of plain flour
1 tablespoon of caster sugar
A pinch of salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup of milk
80 grams of butter, melted
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil 

1 punnet of strawberries, sliced

One cup of thickened cream

250 grams of dark cooking chocolate

 

Method 

In a medium sized bowl, sift dry ingredients and make a well in the centre of the bowl. Add eggs and milk gradually, and whisk until a smooth paste is formed. Whisk in butter and vanilla extract and allow to stand in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Preheat a medium sized frying pan with a tablespoon of oil. Pour about half a ladle of batter into the frying pan, and swirl the batter around until the whole surface of the pan has been covered. The batter and the resulting crepe should be thin. As soon as the crepe is slightly browned and detached, turn it over and cook for a few seconds. Continue until all the batter is gone.

To make the chocolate sauce, break up and put the chocolate in a bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan until it reaches a simmer. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir gently until the mixture is smooth.

To assemble, place crepe on a plate and put sliced strawberries on one third of crepe, then fold over. Drizzle chocolate sauce over the top.

Bon Appetit!

 

Hatpins and a Tasty Thing!

I love to visit antique stores and search for hatpins. 

I don't know why I started to collect them, especially since they are not used in modern times that I know of. Maybe Queen Elizabeth of England still uses them!

A hatpin is a decorative and functional pin for holding a hat to the head, usually by the hair. They are typically around 20cms in length, with the pin head being the most decorated part.

The first hatpins were handmade. In Britain, demand eventually outgrew the number that could be supplied by hand-making, and they began to be imported from France.

In 1832, a machine was invented in America which could mass-produce the pins, and they became much more affordable.

During the 1880s, bonnets gave way to hats, and the popularity of hatpins soared. They remained a standard women's accessory through the 1910s and were produced in a vast range of materials and types.

Hatpin holder boxes were also produced.

Laws were passed in 1908 in America which limited the length of hatpins, as there was a concern they might be used as weapons.

Also by 1910, ordinances were passed requiring hatpin tips to be covered, so as not to injure people accidentally. Various covers were made, but poorer women often had to make do with items like potato pieces and cork.

I don't have a large collection. The ones I do have are very decorative. I also have a few of my mother's which I treasure.

I found this old advertisement for hatpins in a paper to give you an idea of what they looked like.

Unlike hatpins, this recipe will never go out of fashion. 

Prawns and Mushrooms in a Special Sauce

Ingredients

3 tablespoons of olive oil
3 medium size tomatoes, diced
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
500 grams of mushrooms, sliced
1 large onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon sweet chili sauce
A pinch of salt
Half a cup of sour cream
500grams of prawns, peeled and deveined 
One and a half cups of chicken stock, or vegetable if preferred

Method 

In a large fry pan put in one tablespoon of olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. Cook on a medium heat for 10 minutes until tomatoes are soft and releasing juices. Remove from fry pan into a bowl and set aside.

Now in the fry pan place the rest of the olive oil and onions and cook until caramelized. Then add sliced mushrooms. When cooked add the tomato mix back in.

Add salt, sour cream, chili sauce and combine. Then add the stock and stir. Bring the sauce to a simmer and add the prawns. Mix the prawns a couple of times until they are cooked. Do not leave too long or prawns will go tough. Only a couple of minutes is needed.

I like to serve with steamed rice or linguine pasta, garlic bread and a glass of wine.

Serves 4 People

Enjoy! 

Sports and Food Puts You In The Right Mood!

Growing up in Australia and especially being from a large family, there was always going to be some sport that I was involved in, or watched as a spectator.

The boys in my family, or that I knew, always played football in Winter and cricket in Summer. I played netball in Winter and tennis in Summer. Swimming wasn't considered a sport in my vocabulary, it was something I did for fun. These days, all sports seem competitive.

Times have changed, but one thing that stays the same is food. People love to watch sport and either take food, or buy it at the sporting event they are watching. Today, we are encouraged to eat healthier food, but some still like the traditional food.

While in America, I saw they associated the hot dog with most sporting events. After researching, I found the hot dog, the red hot, the wiener, or frankfurter have been around in some culinary form for a long time. It is believed to have been taken to America by immigrants from Europe. 

They said a gentleman by the name of Harry Stevens, who had rights to serve food at the Polo Grounds in New York where the New York Giants played until 1958, was the one with the idea! He apparently, on a cold day in 1901, purchased a pound of sausages from somewhere in New York, encased them in a bread roll and sold them in the stand. The crowd loved them and they became popular.

Some claim that story is a myth and it was another man, Anton Feuchtwanger, who created and sold them at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904. By 1910, it was a big hit and sold at all baseball parks. Cost in 1910 at the baseball parks was a nickel, then with inflation to 25c in 1950. Today, the same hot dog is sold from $2 to $4. Other sporting events such as football and basketball sell them, but the hot dog is mostly associated and sold at baseball games!

Briefly, another story that caught my attention was about a man who owned the "Lincoln Tavern" in Chicago, Illinois. The man, Billy Sianis, had a pet goat which he took to game 4 of the 1945 World Series. A home game at Wrigley Field against the Detroit Tigers. He had box seats, but the odor was too strong and he was ejected with the goat. Sianis is said to have placed a curse on the team, saying they would never win another Pennant or World Series again!
 
In 1964 the tavern moved and was renamed "The Billy Goat Tavern". It has several locations throughout Chicago and is known for great cheese burgers, or cheezborger as some say!

Here in Australia, the meat pie is a tradition at most sporting events, especially football. 

Basically, this pie consists of a hand-sized pastry filled with minced meat (ground beef) and gravy – although it may also be filled with onion, cheese, mushrooms, chicken, seafood, crocodile, emu, vegetables or other fillings. Typically it is smothered in tomato sauce or ketchup.

Its origins are thought to have developed amongst the early settlers who found the pie a good choice with its basic, readily available, ingredients. The English and Irish who came out to Australia already had their own pie versions – Cornish Pasty, Steak and Kidney and Guinness pies. For the English, the pie has been part of their cuisine since medieval times.

In Australia, mutton was mostly used in the first pies as it was cheaper than vegetables. Pies with golden crusts and gravy were available in Sydney from about the mid 1800's as a counter lunch in hotels. Not long after, they were distributed in pie carts to places of entertainment, holiday destinations and sporting events. Pies were often kept in tin boxes and warmed by a charcoal stove. 

I am sure around the world each place has a traditional culinary cuisine enjoyed by many at sporting events. 

Bernadette's Meat Pies

Ingredients 

500 grams of minced beef (ground beef)
1 onion, diced 
1 cup of water 
2 beef cubes
A quarter of a cup of tomato sauce or ketchup
2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce
Pepper and Salt to taste
A pinch of oregano
A pinch of nutmeg
3 tablespoons of plain flour
1 egg, beaten
2 sheets of puff pastry

Method

ith the arrival of white settlement to Australia the British and Irish brought with them a lot of their traditions to the new colony and one of those was the meat pie. Both the English and Irish settlers, the convicts as well as their guards, had their own versions of the pie.
The English pie dates back to medieval times and included such styles as steak and kidney pie and Cornish pastry. The Irish can lay claim to the Guinness pies.
The interesting fact is that the pie can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians' who made a sweet pie from rye, wheat and barley filled with honey. Maybe a long distant relative to the apple and apricot pie perhaps?
Our meat pie was originally made from mutton because it was far cheaper to produce than vegetable ones were at the time.
Our famous Aussie pies have stood the te
- See more at: http://www.australian-information-stories.com/meat-pie.html#sthash.YUUsRCDT.dpuf

ith the arrival of white settlement to Australia the British and Irish brought with them a lot of their traditions to the new colony and one of those was the meat pie. Both the English and Irish settlers, the convicts as well as their guards, had their own versions of the pie.
The English pie dates back to medieval times and included such styles as steak and kidney pie and Cornish pastry. The Irish can lay claim to the Guinness pies.
The interesting fact is that the pie can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians' who made a sweet pie from rye, wheat and barley filled with honey. Maybe a long distant relative to the apple and apricot pie perhaps?
Our meat pie was originally made from mutton because it was far cheaper to produce than vegetable ones were at the time.
Our famous Aussie pies have stood the te
- See more at: http://www.australian-information-stories.com/meat-pie.html#sthash.YUUsRCDT.dpuf

Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees Celsius.
In a deep fry pan brown meat and onion.
Add three quarters of the cup of water, bouillon cubes,tomato sauce (ketchup) and Worcestershire sauce, pepper, salt, oregano, and nutmeg. 
Boil and cover for 15 minutes.
Blend flour with the remaining water until it becomes a smooth paste and add to the meat mix.
Put to aside and let cool.
Grease a pie dish and line with one sheet of puff pastry.
Add the cooled filling mixture. Brush edges of pastry with milk or beaten egg and put the other sheet of pastry on top. Press edges down with a fork. 
Trim edges and glaze top with milk or beaten egg.
Bake in a moderate oven, 180 degrees Celsius for 35 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve with tomato sauce or Ketchup and Enjoy!

 
 
 

Cottages and Cuisine!!!!!!

Pensioner Guard Cottages   

   

Western Australia has many historical buildings. This is a story about some cottages with a difference.

The Pensioner Guards arrived with the first convicts and for the 18 years convicts were brought to Western Australia.

They were Freemen and called Pensioner Guards because they had been pensioned out of the British army and other military establishments. They weren't necessarily old, but had finished their tour of duty.  The men were encouraged to come out on convict ships and act as warders.

Upon arrival, their main duty was to act as a disciplined body of men who could be called by civil authorities to quell any disturbance.

In Western Australia, Pensioner Guards were placed on the fringes of towns with convict depots. The guards were offered packets of land, ranging from two to ten acres. The land came with a two room cottage costing 15 pounds to build. They were erected for the pensioner guards by convicts and ticket of leave labourers.

The cottages were leased to the guards provided they remained and worked for at least seven years. After seven years, the land and cottage became theirs. There were four cottages built in West Guildford, now known as Bassendean, of which Surrey Street is the only one remaining.

Number one Surrey Street was completed in 1857. Records show the first tenant was John Law Davis, his wife Amelia and children. Law Davis was a 30 year old Pensioner Guard, originally employed by the East India Company. Over the next few years, five more children were born .

John died in 1870.

Amelia married John Bates in 1873 and had two more children. Bates was not an enrolled Pensioner Guard and their two children were born in Guildford. It’s possible they too were born and raised in the cottage, which presumably passed to Amelia on the death of her first husband.  

Creamy Prawn and Pasta 

Ingredients

350 grams of fusilli or other short pasta
2 tablespoons of butter
2 whole medium sized leeks, washed and cleaned of any sand /grit halved and finely sliced 
salt and pepper to taste
Half a tablespoon of crushed garlic
500 grams of peeled and deveined prawns
One cup of heavy cream
Zest of one lemon
300 grams of baby spinach
Two tablespoons of olive oil
Half a cup of white wine
One whole corn on the cob (slice the kernels off the cob)
  
Method

Place the pasta in boiling water with about one tablespoon of olive oil and boil until cooked. Drain and set aside.

In a large fry pan place butter, one tablespoon of olive oil and when it has melted add the sliced leeks and corn kernels, stirring for about two minutes. Then place prawns, lemon zest  and white wine in and cook for about a further 3 minutes, or until prawns are done.

Lastly, add the cream, garlic, baby spinach, pasta, salt and pepper to taste. Stir until well combined and heated thoroughly.

Serve with fresh crusty bread.

 

Cooks Creations!!!!

Cookbooks, are they dying as we use the internet to look at food sites?

Department stores were different when I was a child, they always carried different  books, now they seem to be diminishing. Even book stores seem to be few and far between.

I still have my first cookbook purchased from a department store in Perth, Western Australia when I was only about 8 years old.  'The World Book of Meat Dishes' by Nina Froud. It was first published in 1965 in Great Britain and again in 1970. A medium sized book of about 140 pages, I spent all my pocket money on it!

There are many  books I have collected over the years and often refer to them.
The oldest book in my collection is 'The American Woman's Cook Book' edited by Ruth Berolzheimer published by Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago in 1944. 

After some research, I found two interesting stories. 

One on an old book written 600 years ago by chefs employed by King Richard II. 
Experts from Manchester University's John Rylands Library, who discovered the manuscript, have translated a handful of its 150 recipes, which are written in Middle English and date back to 1390.

The recipes include frumenty, a porridge-type dish made of bulghar wheat. Saffron and payn puff as well as a dish of boiled fruits wrapped in pastry.

The unusual cookbook, called the 'Forme of Cury', is believed to have contained dishes to feed servants and the royal family alike. It gives a fascinating insight into the delicacies of the time, including dishes of swan and peacock. After translating the recipes, historians wanted to try the dishes themselves. However, with no ingredient quantities or instructions, making the dishes proved tricky. John Hodgson, who looks after the library's manuscripts and archives, said: "One of the difficulties was that a lot of the recipes were very vague."

Another book, 'Apicius' dates back to the 9th century and is owned by The New York Academy of Medicine. It is the only surviving Roman cookbook, a 9th century copy of the original 2nd century cookery manual. Only two copies of this cookbook, formally entitled 'De Re Coquinaria' are known to exist. The other 9th century copy is believed to reside in the Vatican library, which is older by a few years. 

The Apicius is regarded by culinary historians and those involved with cookery with an almost religious adoration. The name 'Apicius' had long been associated with excessively refined love of food, from the habits of an early bearer of the name, Marcus Gavius Apisius a Roman gourmet and lover of refined luxury who lived sometime in the first century AD, during the reign of Tiberius. 

This 57-leaf document is written in Latin and contains recipes used by the Romans.

The book had been rebound in the 18th century by a French book dealer in mottled calf with gilt edges. A book dealer had removed the 9th century binding to separate the Apicius from a text by Hippocrates, the two had been bound together. ("The Hippocrates" now resides in a collection in Geneva, Switzerland, and is bound in the same 18th century mottled calf as formerly on the Academy's Apicius manuscript). Some years ago, the worn 18th century binding was removed, and the 1,200-year-old manuscript needed to be rebound. The Academy hired Deborah Evetts, the now-retired Head of Rare Book Conservation at the Pierpont Morgan Library, to restore the Apicius using a generous donation from the Culinary Trust. That donation was underwritten by The Brown-Forman Corporation and Kitchen Aid. Evetts cleaned and repaired the 9th century manuscripts parchment leaves, added new vellum end sheets for protection, and hand-sewed through original sewing holes. 

They say the cookbook is a fascinating document that offers a glimpse of life in ancient Rome. It contains many recipes and uses the secrets of ancient Roman and classical Greek cuisine. They ate the same green vegetables, meats, poultry and seafood as called for in these recipes and most of the same spices. The herbs used by Romans were Oregano, Sage, Coriander, Parsley, Rosemary and Thyme. 

The history of the Academy's copy is interesting. The Apicius passed through different hands over the centuries and eventually ended up at the Paris bookseller's shop. The cookbook was purchased by an English aristocrat and book collector. After his death, it was sold at auction and was purchased by Dr. Margaret Barclay Wilson, who eventually gave it to the Academy. 

This may have been cooked in the old days and under a different name but today I call it.....

Bernadette's Creamy Chicken Deluxe 

Ingredients
 4 large Chicken Maryland pieces with skin on
40 grams of butter
2 Green Apples peeled, cored and sliced
10 small pearl onions
2 Bay leaves
1 teaspoon of thyme
Salt and ground black pepper 
6 tablespoons of Brandy
120 mls chicken stock
120 mls of crème fraîche
Half a lemon, juiced
2 tablespoons of parsley, finely chopped

Method 

Melt half the butter in a saucepan over high heat, add apples and sauté, stirring carefully with a spoon until golden brown and tender. Transfer to a bowl.

Melt the remaining butter in the pan over medium heat and fry the onions, bay leaves and thyme for 2-3 minutes.

Add chicken, skin-side down and cook for 5 minutes until golden brown. Turn over and cook for another 5 minutes. Season generously with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. 

Add the brandy, turning the heat up high to burn off the alcohol, and cook for 3-5 minutes. 

Lower heat to medium, add chicken stock and when stock comes to boil, lower heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until chicken is tender. 

Stir in crème fraîche and add apples, raising the heat again to allow some of the cooking liquid to evaporate and the sauce to thicken. 

Finally add lemon juice and parsley.

Serve with mashed potatoes.

Enjoy!