Fiction hoping for the future… fiction yearning for the past: Mr Selfridge vs Star Trek.

The de jour future novel right now is dystopia.   In started right back when with 1984, but it’s magnified in the Hunger Games, The Resistance, The Spin, and so on. Nearly every future imagined is something worse than we have now.  Not only that, it’s something we have done.  We had the civil wars; we ignored the needs of the new generation; we used the environmental resources.  And that seems to be the place fiction is taking us – which I get.  The world is scary.

Yet I contrast all these futures to Star Trek.  Yep, I’m a trekkie.  A died in the wool, Voyager is the best series (don’t worry, I’ve heard it all) but I still love TNG and DS9 trekkie.  (TOS I’m not really that into –but I know all the relevant plot points).  The thing about Star Trek is it saw our – humanities – future as better. That we can do better.  That we, as humanity, should do better.  It challenged stereotypes – interracial romance; female leadership.  And it said we should all band together, and we should all do better.

And today I watched Mr Selfridge.  I really enjoyed it.  But as I watched it, I felt it was in a way a love letter to that time.  To that Britain, to that world.  And it made a point of how Mr Selfridge employed the women (well, until they got married), and how it was a brave new world, music swelling.  And I wonder, as much as I enjoyed it, whether there is some inherent harm in glorifying the past like this.  Yes, the story is great (I lived as a 12 year old in the UK in 1994.  Trust me when I say I loved Selfridges.).  But – should we really be harking back to the past for what we romanticize? Why not romanticize the future?  Why not invest in making our future not the dystopia?  Let’s Star Trek the hell out of ourselves. 

Greetings from San Francisco (Confessions of an Instagrammar)

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So, I’m in San Francisco.  And I forgot my phone.  I realized this on the way to the airport, at the precise moment where we could no longer turn around to get it.  Apart from the whole keeping-in-contact-with-my-child-and-husband thing, the lacking phone is inconvenient because it is my only camera.  And so I have been wandering around here for the last two days and nary a snap to document my travels!

Normally, I quite enjoy instagram.  I enjoy looking at other people’s photos – both of everyday life and glamorous travels.  I enjoy the desire to find the beauty in every moment, every day.  And I was really looking forward to instagramming this trip.  As I walk around though, I’ve been thinking – why?  Is it really because those bunches of little red chillies at the UN Building Farmer’s Market this morning ($1 a bunch! Very hot!) were such a beautiful contrast of little bullets of shiny red against branches of green leaves?  Or is it actually just me wanting to show off? Look at me, I’m in San Francisco! I’m important! I travel.  I don’t just stay in Canberra all the time.

Shamefully, it is both.  The chillies were very pretty, and probably would have made a nice snap.  But I can’t deny there is an element of wanting to portray the exotic parts of my life.  I don’t instagram the laundry, or the daycare run, or the weekly grocery shop (ok, sometimes I do the latter.  I obviously am a sucker for fresh produce).  But for this – my first conference, my first trip to San Francisco – I want to be able to just drop it, ever so casually, into the photographic conversation.  But I can’t (so I’m doing it by a blog post instead. I’m aware of the irony.).   What I’ve come to realize though, is in a way, being camera and phone-less has been strangely liberating.  I can’t document this trip, and I can’t show it off.  So I just have to observe, and absorb, and be content in my own memories.

Of course, there are moments – like the Chihuahua in a baby bjorn – that I really, really wished I had that phone.

Anatomy of a Sunday

Today we...

Felt that fairpalooza had been a bit of a bust, so decided to swing by the Hawker Primary School fete.

 We decorated cupcakes, and then spotted on the horizon...

Both boy and father were bitterly disappointed the cut off age for the hot air balloon ride was 4.  I suspect we'll be back next year for that if nothing else.

Other verdicts: as a school fete, it was pretty big, with quite a bit to do.  Thanks to daylight savings and my inability to realise that while some of my devices change automatically not all of them (hello oven!) do, we arrived as the very beginning, and it was still quite crowded.  A truly bizarre white elephant stall could have revealed some treasures, but Toby entered melt down phase so we headed off for the markets.

To puzzle over this one.  Mighty Perky Nana chocolate bars.  I .... I just.... I don't...   Part of my problem is I keep thinking of Nana as Nanna, not as (ba)nana, which leads to all types of questions about what exactly is perky.  And leaving you with that image,

Smoked meats!  I love a good deli.  But we abstained this week and came home to clean, and to make a muti-layered Indonesian spice cake.

And Toby did his first watercolour painting.

Not bad, kid.

Finally, I headed outside, lured by a flash of colour.  You see, we bought these nasturtiums at least 4 weeks ago.  And then failed in the whole planting stakes.  But they grimly held on despite our total neglect, and have even decided to flower, still in their pitiful little pot.

So I planted them into the flower bed.  What's the bet they're dead by tomorrow?

PS - The cake is delicious.

In defence of Canberra

I was driving into work this morning listening to 666 ABC, and heard a few comments by one the guests disparaging Canberra.  It's sort of trendy to Canberra-bash.  We moved here from Perth 5 years ago.  When people found out we had just moved, the inevitable question would always be (often accompanied with a look of pity) 'Ohhh.  How are you finding it?'.

You know what? We love it!  We weren't expecting to (my husband particularly) and for a couple of sand gropers the lack of an immediately accessible beach still grates sometimes, but overall I love this city.  For its body and its brain.  Where else would you have the stunningly beautiful sight of hot air balloons over Lake Burley Griffin at dawn coupled with a city that buzzes with so much politics that even the local baristas have their opinion on the latest spill saga?

(picture from the ABC)

The thing I increasingly come to realise about Canberra is it's not really one city - or if it is, it's a split personality.  There's the Canberra that is the national capital, and there's the Canberra that is just a big country town.  The national capital Canberra is centered around the parliamentary triangle, and is populated by a mix of fly in/fly out politicians and their staff, and public service types doing the requisite three years at DFAT before they can score an overseas posting.  It is by its nature impermanent and transient, and I'm not sure the people who live in that Canberra ever really consider it home.

Canberra the big country town is another place all together.  It's a place of the EPIC farmers market and Murrumbateman field days.  (Being a country town, a lot of what is great about this Canberra is actually in its surrounds - though there's a lot within the territory borders as well.)  It's a place where the local radio station has a jam making afternoon and invites listeners to drop in with a jar.  In this Canberra, we don't have just a plumber and an electrician - we have a milkman (yes, he delivers!), a chicken lady and a direct line to at least 3 local producers of alpaca fleece. 

It's not to say Canberra is perfect.  There is a lack of really good dining in the city itself - some good second tier stuff is pretty good (Italian & Sons, Pulp Kitchen, Dieci e Mezzo and the like) but a Flower Drum or a Quay?  No.  The funny thing is the actual produce here is fantastic, and most people I have met have been produce driven like I have never seen in any other city.  Backyard veggie patches are the norm, chickens a common accessory, and the various markets on the weekend (EPIC, Woden, Belconnen and Fyshwick) are always packed.  Perhaps all the really good cooking is just going on inside the homes of Canberrans.  Some of the complaints though always strike me as a little sheltered.  Housing affordability?  We bought our 3 bedroom, renovated, on a big block house in 2007 (well after the fabled boom) for a good deal less than we sold our 2 bedroom, somewhat renovated, on a smaller block house in Perth for.  Now, we're not in a salubrious suburb (*coughCharnwoodcough*) but even that seems overrated.  It's quiet, clean and filled with trees.  And at a 14.5km commute from my front door to my work at the ANU, it would be considered practically inner city in most other capital cities.

Canberra may not have the best nightlife in the world, and frankly I wouldn't know.  But I think it embraces a different rhythm.  A rhythm that includes incredible local fairs, which I'm determined to visit this year.  (They run sheep down the main street of Bowral, for goodness sake!  The Collector Pumpkin festival!  Cherries! Young!).   And the lack of fine dining?  Head over to Grazing at Gundaroo and it all starts to feel a little better. It's a city of stunningly blue skies and bitingly cold winters - all the better to snuggle down in your handknit alpaca scarf (you've got to do something with all that fleece you bought!).   And the national capital side has its perks as well - with the National Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia, there's no excuse for feeling culturally deprived.  In need of a political fix?  Head out to Griffith Vietnamese during a sitting week.  Or just hang out near Parliament House at around 6 or so to see all manner of politicians having their morning run.  (This may or may not appeal - a sweaty Tony Abbot is not perhaps the best thing early in the morning.)

I can understand for those who never venture outside of the Parliamentary triangle Canberra may seem a little sterile.  But for those of us who live in both Canberras, the city's pretty great.

A Fair to Forget

We've had a little bit of rain in Canberra lately.   A fairly wet end of Summer.

(Our backyard, where the chooks used to live.  Luckily we foresaw this and moved them while they were only damp, not sodden.)

 Sullivans Creek at ANU is flowing rapidly for the first time I can remember.

My mother's basement didn't fare so well.

All of this was ok (well, I wasn't the one with a flooded basement) until the rain began affecting FAIRMAGEDDON!.  You see, we'd had a busy couple of days last weekend ripping up carpet and building a bunk bed, so we decided to skip the Canberra Show.   Never mind, says I, there are lots of shows in March.  Why, next weekend alone there's 3 events that I want to go to.

And then it rained.  And rained.  And rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained.  (You get the picture).

And then:

It's the Crookwell Potato Festival I'm most upset about.  It sounds like it just walked off the set of Gilmore Girls.  I was going to go and revel in all things potato.  Eat potatoes! Dig potatoes! Throw potatoes! Potato prints! Potato sack races!  It was going to be a glorious, spudtastic celebration of everyone's favourite tuber.  

But, that rain.  By this time Canberra was starting to feel limp.  Grey and drizzly and soggy.  It felt like perhaps it would never stop raining - that this was just the way it was from now.  So I decided to embrace the weather and cook something for dinner that longed for rain and damp as a backdrop.

An oxtail stew with bright spinach dumplings, cooked in lovely English ale, courtesy of Jamie Oliver.  It seems that all of Canberra had the same idea, because I couldn't find oxtail anywhere today.  I settled for osso bucco, and started chopping.  The brightness in my kitchen was a nice antidote to the washed out world outside.

So now the stew has been bubbling away for a few hours, filling the house with all kinds of depth of winter, comfort food aromas.  And outside?

Well played, Canberra.

Tanzanie Odyssey...

So, the family spoke and the chocolate won out.  So I cooked.  And cooked.  And cooked.

First off, the cast of characters.  It was actually not that varied a shopping list.

Chocolate, cream, eggs, cocoa and sugar were the main ingredients.  In very large quantities.  A few novelty items - gelatine and glucose syrup.  And a few things I didn't bother with (inverted sugar and pectin - more on this later).

Now, as you read the Adriano Zumbo book you will notice it is very precise.  69g of cold water precise. Heat to 103 C precise.  My task was made a little more difficult by one of the more... interesting features of our oven.

See that knob?  That's the temperature control knob.  See what's missing?

Yup.   Temperatures.

To be fair, it *did* have markings when we moved in.  But about a year ago, the fact that we actually clean our oven (sporadically) meant we no longer have markings.   I can guesstimate well enough for every day cooking, but I doubt Zumbo would approve.

Anyway, off we started with chocolate meringue.

I'm pretty good with meringue, so it didn't present too much of a challenge, except I didn't pipe it as instructed.  (My inability to follow instructions forms somewhat of an ongoing theme, you'll see.)

The chocolate jelly was next - I'm a fairly new convert to leaf gelatine, but I love it, baby!  I also liked the Zumbo tip of chopping the leaves up before adding the cold water.  Sensible, yes, but it didn't occur to me last time and I ended up dripping water all over the kitchen.

At this stage, vanilla creme brulee was also made, baked and popped into the freezer, but I forgot to take a photo.  Then I gave it a rest for the night, and started Saturday morning with the chocolate madness again.

First off was what Zumbo calls a 'chocolate flourless biscuit' but which is in fact a sponge.   I made two of them, coated one with melted chocolate, let it dry and popped it chocolate side down on the bottom of my square(ish) springform pan. 

 That got topped with the ganache I'd made.   The ganache was meant to be made with 75% cocoa tanzanie chocolate.  My local Coles didn't have tanzanie chocolate (quelle surprise!) so I substituted a mix of Green and Black's organic 55% cocoa mayan spice, beefed up with bit of Lindt extra dark (80%) to up the cocoa content.   I also made chocolate sea salt flakes (as directed), which were folded through the ganache.  A second piece of sponge then covered the ganache layer. 

Then came out the chocolate jelly (came out pretty well, except a slight cling wrap issue - but we overcame), which was topped with the meringue.

The meringue that cracked.  I then decided it was too thick anyway (ignoring the fact that if I had piped as instructed it probably would not have been too thick), so I tried to shave it down.   When it imploded. So then the meringue layer became a meringue crumb layer.  Topped with deconstructed vanilla creme brulee, because it refused to come out of the tin.

This, I might add, was the vanilla creme brulee I painstakingly prepared to Adriano Zumbo's exact (and I do mean exact) directions.  I weighed the egg yolks and cream.  I greased the pan.  I froze it the way he directed.  And yet it would not come out of the pan.  I ignored the concept that perhaps my oven temperature wasn't exactly right in the baking, and became increasingly cavalier with exactness in the next process.

Chocolate saboyan mousse.  Well!  I ignored my thermometer.   Melt chocolate and then cool to 45 C? I scoffed!  Forget it Zumbo.  I can tell if chocolate is too hot (it will melt the cream) or too cold (it will set too quickly).  Whisk sabayon until exactly 82C?  In your dreams!  I've made saboyan before without a thermometer.  I can do it this time.

So was I courting disaster?  Were the cooking gods going to teach me the importance of following instructions?  Was Adriano Zumbo going to descend into my kitchen in a fit of pastry pique?

Nope.  It worked perfectly.

So I topped off the whole shebang with the saboyan, put it in the freezer, and sat down for a cup of tea.

Then I lost a toddler,  (Bliss! No, I'm not that careless.  My mother took him.), had another cup of tea and made the chocolate mirror glaze.  No pictures of the glaze in progress or the state of my kitchen when I'd finished.

Emboldened by my success with saboyan, I strayed even more off the beaten path.  I couldn't find inverted sugar, so I used honey!  I couldn't find pure pectin, so I used Jamsetta!  (I did google extensively to find out the pectin-sugar proportions in Jamsetta and adjusted the recipe accordingly.  For the record, 50g of Jamsetta contains ~ 10g of pectin and 40g of sugar.)  When I accidentally measured out 3 g of water too much, I shrugged my shoulders and carried on.  I was living on the wild side.

Glaze made but not set, we packed the cake and glaze into a freezer bag and headed across to Mum's, to be greeted by this year's iteration of the Valentine's angel.

Unlike last year, when February was actually summer in the capital, it was a more clothed angel this time around.

People arrived, champagne was opened, and I had glazed the cake.  (Actually, I glazed the cake before the champagne.  I was taking no chances.)  Then it got cut up, and left to defrost for two hours.

It was, in the end, all ok.

Incredibly rich, incredibly good, and I don't think I'm going to need chocolate for the next 6 months.  The colour of my kitchen right now - brown.  Glossy, thick, shiny brown.

Roses are red...

We're having a Valentines' Day dinner with the extended family on Saturday night.  When we did this last year, the cousins were newly arrived from Hong Kong, and the boylet looked like this.

Now the kids have had a year of Australian school, weather and backyards and Toby is much bigger.  Bet we can still get him to wear the wings though.

I've volunteered to cook, because I like to, and because something fell into my trolley at Costco last week.  (Costco is dangerous that way.)

So the only question remains, what dessert to make?

I'm tossing up between a duo of pink desserts (the valentine theme is obvious):

paired with (because one Zumbo dessert isn't enough of a challenge...)

Or, if I want to go the also traditional chocolate for Valentines route, there's this little number.

Don't let the picture fool you.  This baby has 6 different layers and textures of chocolate in it - a flourless biscuit sandwiching a chocolate tanzanie ganache with salted chocolate flakes, a layer of chocolate meringue, vanilla creme brulee, chocolate jelly and a chocolate saboyan mousse.  All finished off with a chocolate mirror glaze and tempered chocolate.

(Yes, I am considering making this for 12 people.  I get kind of insane in the dinner party planning phase.  Luckily my husband accepts it as an adorable quirk.)

Or, to go non traditional and just because it looks delicious, there's always the more exotic barbados...

What to chose?