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The Umbrian Supper Club

3/6/2016

 
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Marlena de Blasi: Allen & Unwin $29.99
 
TAKE five women, one rustic makeshift kitchen and one shared weekly meal. Blend with tenderness, add a liberal pinch or two of understanding and season generously with love. This is the down-to-earth formula behind American expat Marlena de Blasi’s latest instalment from Italy.
In The Umbrian Supper Club de Blasi examines life in the tiny village of Orvieto in rural Umbria – a little-known landlocked region between Tuscany to the west, Marche on the Adriatic Sea coast and Lazio to the south.
In four distinct chapters de Blasi profiles Miranda, Ninuccia, Paolina and Gilda – her four co-conspirators in both convivial conversation and communal cuisine.
Buxom and boisterous Miranda has been celebrating her 76th birthday every year for as long as de Blasi has known her. Widowed, she has no desire to remarry, despite sharing an apparently contented long-term alliance with a man whose companionship she treasures.
Temperamental, take-no-prisoners Ninuccia has returned to her native Umbria after living as a new bride in her mother-in-law’s house in Calabria. She now remembers fondly her time in a community where gang executions were commonplace.
Aged 60, cooking teacher Paolina has just received her first marriage proposal, causing her to hesitate, uncertain as she weighs up changing the delicate daily balance that surrounds her.
And Gilda, with no biological offspring of her own, recalls the painful days of a youth in which she mothered three small children and ran an entire household while still a child herself.
This is Sex and the City without the Cosmopolitans, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants without the teen-girl insecurity, Steel Magnolias without the tears.
For lovers of wholesome, uncomplicated, hearty food The Umbrian Supper Club also contains ample inspiration for experimenting at home: brandy-soaked wild boar, slow-cooked pork chops with cinnamon and prunes, and red-wine-and-butter-braised pasta with a dark chocolate garnish. Buon appetito!

Spice Journey

24/3/2016

 
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Shane Delia: Murdoch Books $49.99
 
THREE kitchen ingredients say “Easter” in Australian like no other: seafood, lamb and chocolate.
This year a plethora of fresh takes on that trio is offered in Spice Journey, the printed accompaniment to Shane Delia’s SBS TV series of the same name. In this beautifully illustrated book Melbourne restaurateur Delia documents his travels through the regions whose people played crucial roles in the creation of Easter as we know it today.
Delia starts his exploration in Malta, his parents’ country and an island with a culinary style coloured in the centuries immediately before Jesus’ time by its Phoenician heritage.
Heading east, he visits Lebanon (the ancestral home of his wife Maha’s family), Turkey and Iran. At the other end of the Mediterranean Delia finishes with tours through Morocco and Andalusian Spain.
All six cultures contribute dishes to Spice Journey, some of the most inventive of which have seafood, lamb or chocolate as their hero.
On the seafood front there’s cured salmon with beetroot mayonnaise, pumpkin puree and fennel vinaigrette; cornbread-and-fennel-seed-crusted sardines; and scallop-filled zucchini flowers with smoked-eel dressing and orange and coriander crumb.
Lamb comes in an array of incarnations: as kofte with eggplant yoghurt and a black bread garnish; braised with saltbush and caramelised rockmelon; and slow-roasted with garlic and Lebanese seven-spice powder and served with berry and toasted pumpkin seed yoghurt and nigella-seed bread.
What better to these mains than hot chips sprinkled with flaked almonds, Aleppo pepper, coriander and sumac?
The desserts too combine the best of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours: mastic pudding with chocolate soil, blackberry sorbet and rosemary pearls; chocolate and pistachio m’hencha (coiled pastry); and smoked chipotle and chocolate fondant with Pedro Ximenez sherry and almond milk icecream.
Thanks to Delia, adventurous Easter dining at home this year is well within reach.

Special Delivery

6/11/2015

 
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Annabel Crabb and Wendy Sharpe: Murdoch Books $39.99
 
THE average Australian might not be able to break bread with Canberra politicians in the style of Annabel Crabb but, thanks to journalist and foodie Crabb’s new publishing collaboration, anyone can enjoy the sweet treats that star in her ABC TV interview series Kitchen Cabinet.
For Special Delivery Crabb teams up with childhood friend and now colleague Wendy Sharpe to present a suite of recipes with a twist: every dish is designed to withstand travel.
In this season of carpark picnics, and with Christmas, New Year and Australia Day on the near horizon, the task of moving prepared food from one location to another can be challenging. Crabb and Sharpe have elevated the standard cookbook to a newly practical level with their inclusion of packing and finishing instructions to enable home cooks to transport culinary offerings without fear or stress.
Although Crabb is best known for Kitchen Cabinet’s cakes and slices, Special Delivery covers the full spectrum of dishes, extending from savoury mains through desserts and snacks to festive drinks.
Standouts include a cheesy, pesto-garnished take on the traditional bread-and-butter pudding; a stonefruit-layered breakfast focaccia; a tabbouleh of coriander, fennel and pomegranate seeds; a beetroot, goat cheese and lemon thyme ‘tarte tatin’; a vegetarian version of France’s meat-laden cassoulet; a Turkish-themed moussaka; a roasted strawberry ginger cheesecake; a macadamia, mango and lemon myrtle trifle; and cakes in combinations such as honey and fig semifreddo, and blueberry and orange with a syrup of Lady Grey tea. Simple bottled gift items (quince-and-chai-tea jelly, and passionfruit curd) are included, as are party tipples and nibbles (rhubarb and rose cordial, Brazilian cheese puffs, and walnut and red pepper dip).
Special Delivery’s recipes vary in complexity, ranging from a nutty quince crumble based on several hours of simmering to incredibly simple Mexican almond wedding biscuits made with only four ingredients.

Picnic in Provence

21/8/2015

 
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Elizabeth Bard: Little, Brown $27.99
 
GIVEN that stories of expats settling in rural France are a dime a dozen in the English-speaking world, is there really room for yet another “I-moved-to-Provence-and-kept-a-diary” memoir? When said book is as well-written, revealing and informative as this one, the answer is unreservedly “yes”.
When American writer Elizabeth Bard and her French cinema-consultant husband Gwendal head to Céreste – a village of just over 1000 people in the hill country of the sunny south-east – for a quick break before the birth of their first child, their plan is certainly not to set in motion a life-changing tree-change.
However, fate – and a shared passion for literary history – intervenes.
On learning that the wartime home of French Résistance leader and poet René Char is for sale, they do not hesitate. Upping stakes in Paris they leave behind family, friends and financial security in search of a more relaxed, more enriching environment in which to raise their son.
The lifestyle might well be idyllic but what will pay their bills? In Céreste the family’s challenge becomes supporting itself.
What results is the establishment one of France’s finest artisanal icecreameries: a business built on non-traditional dessert flavours as typically Procençal as saffron, fennel seed, basil, black truffle, and rosemary, olive oil and toasted pine nuts.
Like its predecessor, Lunch in Paris, Picnic in Provence contains the perfect balance of personal reflection and cultural and social observation without veering into the self-indulgence and maudlin introspection that mar so many uncomfortably personal “finding oneself” books.
The 63 original Provençal-inspired recipes which food-lover Bard includes are a mouth-watering bonus. Rabbit with pastis, fennel and fresh peas; char-grilled sardines with vinegar and honey; split-pea soup with pork belly and Cognac; blood sausage with apples and autumn spices; and lavender honey and thyme icecream stand out.

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