The Future

At the end of last year Ipsos Mackay published a report on consumers’ attitudes to the future.

Man, was it bleak!

Hardly anyone, regardless of age, gender or background, thought the future would be better than the past.

Here are some of the comments that were made in the fieldwork for that report:

“The boat people coming in. If they start coming, they’ll swamp us.”

“Crime is going to get worse.”

“The gap between rich and poor will get a lot worse and not just other countries, here in Australia too.”

“That’s how the future is going. American culture is going to dominate everything.”

“We won’t have the services. No enough people paying tax.”

“In ten years we’ll be like London. You have to be scared of ten year olds in London.”

“Our stimulation levels will get more and more elevated. Something will have to be really big to get people’s attention.”

And this is just a taste of all the terrible things awaiting us in the future, according to the participants in this study.

At the end of the fieldwork, the team wondered what was causing people to feel so despondent about the future. As someone currently reading a lot of Australian history, there are many ways we are now better off than we were, say, fifty years ago (let alone a hundred years which is not long in the scheme of things). Are we hard-wired to be nostalgic about the past? Are we bracing ourselves for an unknown future by being deliberately pessimistic? Or is this pessimism merely a symptom of our lack of faith in our leaders to adequately address the problems of today, let alone tomorrow? All three probably and one of the consistent themes in our research over the last two years has been consumer anger about short-term thinking in government and corporate life.

You can hear me discussing this report with the lovely Antony Funnell from Radio National’s Future Tense program:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2010/2811132.htm

More information can be found about The Future here:

http://www.ipsos.com.au/knowledgecentre/news/100128.aspx

There is one quote that never made it into the report, which I just love. The young man responsible said this in the context of a broader discussion about the impact of technology on our ethical behaviour.

“I have more faith in humanity to believe that internet porn will lead to a decline in personal integrity.”

Schiaccia briaca

Few people outside Elba would have heard of this cake. The name roughly translates as ‘drunken tart’. I could make a million jokes about this but it’s hardly necessary.

As long as I can remember, every Easter or Christmas or special occasion, my nonna would make this along with paneforte. My mother has made it less regularly, but has thrown herself into the practice of late, perhaps for nostalgic reasons. This Christmas, for the first time, she showed me how to make it, an exchange of knowledge from mother to daughter which has been happening for decades, perhaps centuries.

Neither my nonna nor my mother used an official, written recipe, albeit they do exist.

http://www.altacucinasociety.com/recipes_detail.asp?id=83

There is even a group on Facebook dedicated to this unassuming but incredibly tasty cake.

Here is what my mother showed me:

Take a cup of raw walnuts and almonds, chopped, and a cup of sultanas.

Add half a cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and two cups of self-raising flour. Mix.

Taste. Add more sugar if needed. The dry ingredients should feel lumpy but not too lumpy or the cake will fall apart easily when cut.

Combine a cup of Muscat with a cup of olive oil. Working quickly, add the wet ingredients to the dry, adding more flour if need be to make a stiff dough. Press into a medium sized lined cake tin. Make indentations in the top of the dough and then sprinkle sugar and some oil and Muscat mixed together over the top.

Bake in a medium oven until brown and a skewer comes out clean.

In my first attempt I used raisins instead of sultanas. I will try making it with some pine nuts and honey next time around.

When my husband and I went to Elba four years ago it was was autumn, the off-season for tourists and very quiet. We couldn’t find a proper bakery to buy some Schiaccia and the locals warned us off the commercial stuff. On Elba, Schiaccia has a pinkish crust because they tend to used Aleatico rather than Muscat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatico

Griffith Review: Food Chain

I haven’t blogged for ages. The holiday period interrupted my blogging routine and since the New Year I have been diligent working on my new book so blogging has suffered.

This will be a short blog, about a piece in the new current edition of Griffith Review on the theme of food.

Here is information about the edition.

http://www.griffithreview.com/current-edition.html

Here is an extract from my piece of reportage on the cooking class run at Ozanam Learning Centre for homeless men and women.

http://www.griffithreview.com/current-edition/240-reportage/854.html

Also check out my friend and colleague Natasha Cica’s piece on food in Tasmania.

It’s been a long time goal of mine to appear in this publication. Griffith Review is one of the more inventive and engaging forums for Australian writing around today.

Flavour trends for 2010

As we near the end of 2009, my thoughts naturally turn to what might happen in 2010 in terms of general consumer trends and of course food trends in particular. Will the second series of MasterChef be as successful and influential as the first? Will we continue to see the two big supermarkets lift their game? Will more and more market gardens and farmers markets crop up and thrive in our big cities and regional centres?

Recently, market research firm Mintel has announced their predictions for the leading flavour trends of 2010. They predict that more experimental consumers will drive the introduction of new flavours in the food mainstream. Here are their culinary prognostications for the New Year.

Cardamom: I love cardamom but it can be such a strong flavor it needs to be used sparingly. I have a cardamom cake recipe I have used in the past. The spice guru Rosemary Hemphill suggests in her book Spice and Savour using cardamom with baked pears, in a honey dressing and in rice pudding.

Sweet Potato – I love it mashed with lots of butter, roasted with potatoes covered in honey and matched with pork or in fritters. It’s sad we don’t get many varieties of this wonderful root veggie in Australia.

Hibiscus - About five years ago my father-in-law started using candied hibiscus flowers in champagne. I have tried in it cocktails and in syrup form I can see it used in desserts, especially with poached fruits.

Cupuaçu – I have never heard of this but I suspect it’s another faddish super-food from the Amazon … or am I just jaded from having seen Avatar yesterday?

Rose water - I use rosewater in my strawberry and lime jam to give it a special perfume. It’s wonderful in cakes and cocktails. I have a recipe for rosewater panna cotta with fig and walnut pastries I must try out in 2010.

Latin – We really struggle with Latin food in Australia … so many bad Mexican and Brazilian places have put me off it. I remember with fondness The Rattlesnake Grill on the North Shore, no longer with us, where you could have decent south of the border food.

Spice and Savour

I have a slightly damaged but still very presentable copy of Rosemary Hemphill’s Spice and Savour.

I learned about the book – which is arguably one this country’s most important books about using herbs and spices in cooking – when I went to one of her son’s spice education classes.

Ian Hemphill owns Herbies in Rozelle, writes and teaches about herbs and spices.

www.herbies.com.au/

My copy of Spice and Savour reminds me of how lovely it is to own a book as physical object with a particular history. Sometimes a screen can’t beat pages and ink.

One the first terracotta coloured page, underneath the book’s pencilled-in price of $7.50, there is written in a different pencil and handwriting ‘Somerset Cottage, Dural NSW, 12/2/66.’

I am unsure as to whether this is a first edition, the book having been initially published in 1964. At the back of the book the resident of Somerset Cottage has left an old newspaper clipping with a recipe for pizza napoletana. I still keep this clipping in the pages.

Anyhow Hemphill’s book covers dried herbs and their uses, spices and aromatic seeds. With the usual basil, bay, cinnamon, pepper, juniper berry and mustard seed, the author includes the more exotic (by 1960’s Australian standards at least) paprika and saffron, cumin and fennel.

Each entry profiles the spice or herb and suggests some recipes to put each ingredient to best use; at times she includes medicinal uses for herbs (such as sage hair tonic).

The book has black and white illustrations throughout by Claire Simpson, who exhibits a less flamboyant but just as charming Mirka Mora-ish style.

The book contains so many terrific recipes, but there is one that particularly caught my eye, Mango Mousse using ground ginger served with shredded coconut.

This month's Vogue

This month’s Vogue contains an article I wrote on how to make friends later in life.

http://www.vogue.com.au/

The piece was half inspired by another article I wrote for Vogue this year about the art of conversation.

I am always interested to see how people change as they age and whether they open up or shut off to new experiences, ideas and people. Often we are so busy we feel there isn’t room for any new people in our lives. While I understand that feeling, I think it’s a worrying one and something I try to fight against.

As part of the research for that piece, I interviewed journalist and author Brigid Delaney, the author of the recent This Restless Life.

http://thisrestlesslife.com/

In her book Brigid interviews a whole batch of young Australians travelling the work for work, study and the next new experience. She attempts to understand the mindset of this mobile group of gold-collar workers.

Here is an extract from our interview.

V: Did you find that the issue of making friends came up in your interviews for the book?

BD: Yeah. I think it’s a lot easier than it used to be. I still find that people, at whatever age, are still keen for connections, still keen for friendship and will often renew or replenish friendship depending on their stage in life. They will keep their old friends but they might be in different careers or different family structures so as their life changes, their need for friendship changes. People who are open and want connections will make new friendships depending on their stage of life. I don’t necessarily think it stops, it is an ongoing process. You can make some fantastic friendships later in life through life changes such as motherhood or divorce – they are big ones. Once you are single again, you have all this free time and friendship is so important. People who stay with the same friendship group throughout life, it can be quite a lonely experience. Your life is obviously going to diverge at different points and you are going to need to replenish people.

V: In terms of the people you talked to for your book, whose lives are pretty mobile, what was driving them to move - work, experiences, love?

BD: Mainly work, but also postgraduate studies, where they would meet a whole new range of people, high powered, a good cross-over of connections based on work and friendship. And that would open the door to the most extraordinary lives. Those friendship groups are truly international and these people would be visiting friends’ parents in Tuscany or visiting someone who had hired a Greek Island for a holiday. When people travel they are more open to new experiences, new people. They are probably more likely to make friends away than they would at home. At home they have their habits and their structures and their routines and they may not necessarily be room for new people.

V: What does this open and mobile attitude create do you think?

BD: It creates the primacy of weak ties. It means being comfortable with people who you don’t have strong ties with. It requires the person to be social gregarious and trusting and open.

V: Does that presuppose a degree of confidence?

BD: Confident people thrive in this world. If you are comfortable about moving in and out of social groups and open to different people, you will do well.

V: What would you say to someone who says they are too busy to make new friends?

BD: People who say that should try to maybe, once a month, talk to someone they wouldn’t normally talk to, invite someone over for dinner, a co-worker who looks intriguing. I think there are a lot of riches that can come from broadening your social circle.

Food Blogs I Like #1

Charlotte Wood is an Australian fiction writer, a very good one so my friends tell me. She is published by Allen & Unwin and her book The Children is her one novel people have suggested I read. So basically I am saying I have heard of her but not read anything she has written … yet.

Anyhow Charlotte also has a terrific food blog – how to shuck an oyster - and I thought it would be a good one to profile as the first of my monthly ‘Food Blogs I Like’ post. Thanks to JB for telling me about it.

http://howtoshuckanoyster.com/

In her blog she has recipes of meals she has prepared and views about food preparation, discussion of the food she buys and grows, fads and trends, discussion of books and food writers, with a bit of food politics thrown in.

I liked the look of her sweet & spicy cumquat chutney as well as her citrus couscous.

Also I loved her idea that roast chicken is ‘the kitchen’s little black dress’.

Plenty of plays on words as well (leaves of class, little patty, small potatoes, you get the picture) which for an inveterate punner like me is a treat.

Looking through the pages, I am amazed at the depth of the content. Sadly I am way off this as I only get the chance to blog once or twice a week and if I spend too much writing about food it eats into my time for cooking and eating. It’s all about priorities.

On another point …

Last week my friend Hong-Im took for me lunch at Din Tai Fung, a new-ish dumpling and noodle place at World Square. It’s the first Australian outlet of what is a global chain with stores in Japan, China, Indonesia and the US.

Here is Helen Greenwood’s review:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/restaurant-reviews/din-tai-fung-sydney/2008/06/27/1214472754072.html

My husband and I go to Kam Fook’s in Bondi Junction pretty regularly for the same old stuff – steamed prawn dumplings and pork buns. All good but this place is operating on another level.

The delicacy of the dumplings was unbelievable. The number of pleats in each dumpling makes them look like fancy little handbags. It is amazing how thin the noodle sac is but how resistant it is to breaking. Almost like a membrane protecting an essential organ (they did have a bald testicle like quality …) The pork ones we ordered were steamed of course with about half a tablespoon of broth in them. The crescent-shaped veggie dumplings were also great. And the red bean dumplings weren’t too sweet.

You can actually see the workers make the dumplings through a window and watching them move so exactly but swiftly is a sight to see.

Needless to say the dumplings are worth the extra cost.

Hong-Im encouraged me to use fresh ginger and vinegar rather than just soya sauce on my dumplings. Interesting how you are always more adventurous when someone is encouraging you, teaching you about food they know about and you don’t.