Merry Christmas to all!

Tuesday, 13^th December, 2011.

Hello everyone. Merry Christmas! Today is the first day of Christmas, so time to break out that Partridge in a Pear tree. It also means there is less than two weeks to get that last minute Christmas gift. If you’re like me, you’ve been hiding gifts in the bowels of the bedroom wardrobe since August. But every year there seems to be one family member or friend that keeps you braving the shopping malls right til Christmas Eve. Regular readers will know how much I love this time of year – good food is abundant and most people are in a good mood. Our fridge at home is full of eggnog, the stockings have been hung and the tree trimmed. There is even the occasional Carol to be heard.

Last year I posted a list of great cookbooks I believe would make excellent gifts for the home chef and I stand by those suggestions if you didn’t get them then. The past year seems to have focussed on food, with yet more foodie television shows, stores opening up in suburban shopping malls dedicated to kitchen wares and the preparation of food and gourmet ingredient stores in every major city. Australia jumped on the Thermomix band wagon and it seems the whole world got a sweet tooth with cake decorating and cupcakes taking centre stage. But for me the ultimate gift, for any occasion really, is a book. Not an eBook, a real tangible book that you can feel connected to as you physically turn the page to find what comes next. What better gift for a foodie or want to be chef then a recipe book. I’m reminded of the ‘give him a fish and he has a meal for a day, teach him to fish and he has meals for a lifetime’ proverb. As I said last year I am a total cookbook junkie and can’t resist buying any that are slightly interesting as they come out and this year has seen hundreds of cookbooks hit the shelves. Everyone has one. I only took film studies as a minor at University so I’m not sure what part of an actor’s training involves them mastering the culinary arts but if you’d love to see what kind of meals Eva Longoria or Olivia Newton-John or even Ian Thorpe might like to cook then there is a book for you. There is also a trend of restaurant chefs releasing home cooking cookbooks and the travel journal recipe book fusion is popular. If you have found yourself in the position of still needing a gift for that serious foodie in your life who perhaps doesn’t have the perceived talent of the last winner of Master Chef then checkout these suggestions from some of my purchases this year:-

Heston Blumenthal At Home by Heston Blumenthal. – Heston Blumenthal is known for his scientific or avant garde approach to cooking and usually leaves home cooks in open mouthed amazement, as well as many professional chefs. But in this book he presents a simple layout, concise dishes and an explanation of the science behind many of his ‘tricks’. This is the second book by Blumenthal to contain home food; the first much more humbly presented simply titled Family Food which should still be available as well.

Marque: A Culinary Adventure by Mark Best – Award winning chef Mark Best of Sydney’s Marque has put together one of the most beautiful cookbooks of the year from the higher end of the market. This is the kind of book you read again and again with the recipes presented in detail and photographed well. This is for the adventurous cook.

Rockpool Bar & Grill by Neil Perry – This is the second time Neil Perry has appeared on my top five lists and with good reason. Of all Perry’s books this could be the best. There is a large part of the book dedicated to the background of his restaurants and tips for everything from running a good bar to service and cocktail recipes. There is a lot of passion in this book and the food recipes are outstanding.

The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria – This is one of those to the minute trendy books where the world’s best chefs dumb it down and the offering from the chef who lead the culinary world for almost ten years from his restaurant in Spain, ElBulli is very good. He presents the recipes in groups of three for harmonious dinner menus and has done a fantastic job of making the them accessible.

My Abuela’s Table by Daniella Germain – The story goes that Daniella, a Melbourne based graphic artist used a bunch of Mexican recipes of her Grandmother’s to create an end-of-year project and it was spotted by a publisher resulting in this book. It contains ‘real’ Mexican food, not the westernised version many of us are used to and is a beautiful collection visually.

Well, hope that helps you out, happy shopping. From all the staff at Lexie’s on the Beach have a wonderful holiday season and a happy, safe New Year! See you in a few weeks – Merry Christmas.

Til then, Peace and Good Eating.

Have restaurants become personal chefs?

Wednesday, 30^th November, 2011.

Hello everyone. Wow! Well such a lot has happened since my last blog, for both Lexie’s and myself. I hope you’ve been grooving away while preparing dinner after bringing a little music into the kitchen. I’ve been doing a bit more cooking at home as well and think I’ve worked through most of the music we discussed in the last blog.

 In September we welcomed a new chef, Michael Duff to the team, who has settled in well and taken the reigns for me while I’ve been on annual leave over the past three weeks. Lexie’s on the Beach now has a sister cafe in the heart of the CBD – Lexie’s on King. The official opening was 14^th November and business has steadily increased since. With the same simple mission as our cafe on the beach; simple food, relaxed style and customer satisfaction -  Lexie’s on King has an accessibility to local businesses that should make this urban chic cafe, with its warm autumn-toned decor a winner. There’s a young, passionate chef in the kitchen, supported by a great front of house team. Now you can get Lexie’s great coffee blend and good food in two locations. Lexie’s on the Beach will continue, as it has for three years now, to bring Australian Native Ingredients to the attention of diners, incorporating them into everyday cooking that, results in tremendous food.

Also in September, our fellow chef and friend in Brisbane, Matt Clark wrote a blog entry titled ‘Waiter, what is the level of Na (sodium) in the risotto?’ which addressed a topic I believe is becoming more of a concern and I agree with Matt. The blog refers to the customer that comes into a restaurant with such a sense of ‘eating healthy’ that many menu items are simply not suitable. You all know what I’m talking about, you’ve had a dinner party at home with the fussy eater, the one guest who is not eating whatever it may be this week, who goes from diet to diet, reads articles that say salt can be harmful in large quantities and then proceeds to cut out salt altogether from their diet. It used to stop there, but more and more often now restaurants are expected to be personal chefs. [By the way, there is a term for an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating and it is Orthorexia Nervosa.]  Everyone is different. Everyone needs a certain amount of salt, oil, sugar and even fat that we all seem preoccupied with eradicating from our diets.  For a while now MacDonald’s has added a calorie count on their menus, brought on mostly by the worldwide community backlash of Supersize Me, with a push for other fast food chains to follow suit. The idea is now starting to trickle into restaurants with concerned ‘specialists’ wanting menu item ingredients listed and a healthier choice alternative to appear. To this I say, and I’m sure many chefs will agree with me, that a couple of important factors are being overlooked. A single dish may have five or six components with each component having up to a dozen or more ingredients. The menu would be to size of a phone book, by the time you finish reading it service would be over. And two, restaurants and cafes are NOT health food stores, sure, we do our best to have healthy options, gluten free, diary free, chemical free, pesticide free and insert ingredient here free alternatives but there’s only so much one cool room can hold. Finally, and this is probably the determining factor – no one is making you choose a specific dish, the responsibility is yours. In the past few weeks every major newspaper has run an article of some description on healthy eating. It is great (and I’m the first one to say so) that the general public are becoming more food aware, it not only makes our job more of a challenge but more satisfying and the more likely that chef’s are able to serve fresh, local produce and have it appreciated. My sign off tagline for the blog – Peace and Good Eating, does not just refer to healthy food, but the whole eating experience, the pleasure of food, and sometimes that means a big piece of chocolate mud cake that…oh yes, has flour in it. Restaurants and cafes are about taste, trying new things, indulging a little. I’m not suggesting you don’t eat healthily. It’s about being responsible, people. Matt Clark writes in his blog “If you have such serious concerns for your food consumption, there are many competitive weight-loss companies that would be more than keen to supply you with fat and salt free, tasteless food.” I am often amazed at how a customer can come to a cafe or restaurant, sit next to a beautiful beach setting, have twenty or so dishes to choose from and still be in a bad mood and have issue with everything before the wait-staff have taken an order. And that, right there, is the crux of the problem. Too often now, we as a society eat out, eating out used to be a special event or at least a once a week event. You’d dress well, order a 300g steak or a rich piece of venison or fish covered in a creamy sauce, you’d throw your diet aside and order from the dessert menu with perhaps a glass or two of wine AND you’d enjoy yourself. That’s what it’s all about.

At the end of October the owners of Lexie’s, Doug and Trish celebrated three years of operation. You may notice the current menu has dishes you’ve seen before – the reason is to thank all of our loyal customers, who keep coming back time and again. We’ve picked to dishes that you told us you like the most and put them all onto one menu. Thank you for your support and patronage over the past three years. The menu will be formatted a little differently for here on, becoming more static. But don’t worry this only means we’ll be bringing you more terrific specials to try out.

I’ll be back at the Beach tomorrow so I look forward to seeing you all again soon. Next time in the blog – my annual Christmas wrap-up of this year’s best foodie buys.

Til next time, Peace and Good Eating.

Cooking with Music

Thursday 25^th August, 2011.

Hello everyone. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Us and Them: The Symphonic Music of Pink Floyd recently and I was blown away; A at how good it was and B at the fact I had not come across it before. I always get excited when I hear something new or at least new to me and I love symphonic versions of pop or mainstream albums. One of my favourites is the collaboration of Metallica and The London Symphony Orchestra. In recent years though, much of the music I hear is at work as restaurant background ambience which symphonic tracks don’t really lend themselves to all that well. Neither does Pink Floyd for that matter and another of my favourite types of music – film score, is ruled out for the same reason, too much variance in dynamic level – no one wants to be shocked out of their chair by a sudden cymbal crash or the sound of an 80 piece orchestra hitting fortissimo.

We all know the kind of music that gets played in restaurants but what about at home, not just as background music to a dinner party or BBQ. What do you play while cooking? A quick search on iTunes for cooking music will bring up 100 or so titles, with each type of cuisine covered. Celebrity chefs have cds of their favourite music for sale and foodie magazines such as delicious have done jazz compilations to cook to. You’ve probably seen titles like Breakfast with Beethoven and Morning Tea with Mozart from the classics range. I could be cliché and say I like Pavarotti when cooking Italian and the singular tonal twang of a sitar or breathy melody of a lone wooden flute whilst preparing Asian food but the truth is I often prefer to play soundtrack(not score) cds. Usually these albums have a good collection of tracks, not all upbeat, not all mellow and can definitely enhance a cooking experience. There are exceptions of course, I like to play a band called Chingon when preparing Mexican food, for some reason it just seems to taste better, although it could be the Corona with lime and Tabasco that I only drink when eating Mexican that has something to do with it too. If you were to search the internet you would see that many bloggers have their own opinion on what you should play while cooking.

Universities throughout the world have studied the effect of music on the brain and its influence on other experiences such as eating. Until the last decade or so, specific music was played in shopping malls because it was thought to entice people to spend more. Until around the same time, colour was used in fast food organisations to ensure a higher turnover of customers – yellow to be precise; is said to speed up the dining experience. Yellowtail wine company set up a Vinyl Bar some years back that matched their range of wines to seventies and eighties pop hits. Chefs all over the world are experimenting with food and different senses. Colour in dishes, monochromatic degustations, and the scent of something non food related to invoke an emotional response to the meal, the sound of waves and the ocean being played at the presentation of seafood courses. I once had a meal that ended by being presented with an mp3 player to accompany a dark chocolate, orange scented dessert. The track being played was African drums, the deep bass resonance was supposed to enhance the dark, bitter notes of the chocolate – whether it did or not, I can’t say for sure as I didn’t try the dessert without the player.

I’ve given you my thoughts on food in various media before in past blogs, both in film and on television and while there is a myriad of songs devoted to food, many of them performed by Jimmy Buffet, I prefer to marry food and cooking or dining rather than entertain a hybrid of the two subject matters. Here are just a few of my choice selections for chilling out in the kitchen or for turning up the heat. From the soundtrack genre try these:-

Cruel Intentions (1999): A good eclectic mix of pop tunes featuring Placebo and Counting Crows as well as Aimee Mann and Marcy Playground. Best Bit-A tossup between track 1 and track 5. I’m leaning towards track 5 – Colorblind by Counting Crows.

Jack & Sarah (1995): Some great chill out tracks with artists like Annie Lennox, Massive Attack and Simply Red. Best Bit- Track 1. Stars by Simply Red.

Simply Irresistible (1999): Not too many artists on this album are well known (which I don’t mind) and there are a couple of good cover tracks. Our bridal waltz was even taken from this album. Best Bit-Excluding track 8 which was our bridal waltz, I’m going with track 7. Beautiful Girls by Chris Lloyd.

Three to Tango (1999): For the jazz lover, some of the top jazz artists of the time contribute such as Dr. John, The Brian Setzer Orchestra and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Best Bit- Track 2. Swing Sweet Pussycat by The Atomic Fireballs.

What Women Want (2000): One of my favourites with a heap of tracks from the Crooners as well as a few pop princesses like Christina Aguilera, Leah Haywood and Meredith Brooks. Best Bit –Track 4. I Won’t Dance by Frank Sinatra.

If you prefer a perhaps, less engaging instrumental album try these:

Determination (1991): Arguably the best album by the guitar guru from down under, Tommy Emmanuel. Best Bit- Track 5. Initiation.

White Blues (1996): A compilation of the smooth jazz sounds of Chet Baker, his best and signature laidback tracks with the highlights being ‘round Midnight and Dolphin Dance. Best Bit- Track 5. Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

I also love One Small Step: Live and Solo by John Butler. Track 4. Oceans is amazing. I can also recommend Lucky Man by Dave Koz and New York City by The Peter Malick Group featuring Norah Jones (I know, I know… but this is not like her solo albums).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There are two very powerful mood modifiers in this world that don’t come from over the counter with a prescription and they are; Music and Food.

Til next time, Peace and Good Eating. 

Heirloom Recipes

Sunday 24^th July, 2011.

Hello everyone. Well I hope I’ve given you enough time between blogs to see some of the films we discussed in the last blog? Did you enjoy? Hope so. This week I wanted to talk about something completely different. I have been thinking recently about what I might hand on to my girls. In the age of instant information via the internet, e-books, food blogs, cookbooks of ‘grandma’s recipes’, I wonder how many families are passing on recipes from generations past? I have next to none. I just picked up a copy of New Zealander Frances Hansen’s Keepsakes which reads and presents like a scrapbook of typed, hand-written and pasted in recipes and memories from her life.

I love to (when I have the time) read autobiographies. Celebrities, athletes, politicians and of course chefs. I like to see what has shaped a person into what they have become. Michael J Fox, JFK and David Attenborough are particularly interesting. As for chefs, I would recommend to anyone, that they read Grant Achatz’ story. There is a certain time in most people’s lives when the past or history of their own family becomes important to them. It usually comes after having children of their own or following the death of a parent or grandparent. When there is still family of the earlier generations around to tell them how it was. When reading ‘celebrity’ chef biographies, many of them have come from a large family where eating and cooking is a big part of each day and they sat on the kitchen bench from a young age peeling beans. In the case of Gordon Ramsay it was a necessary job at first in order to pay bills.

None of this was the case with me – My Mum (god bless her) always had dinner on the table every night and it’s not until you are trying to do this yourself that you realise what an achievement that really is to answer the most annoying of questions – ‘What’s for dinner?’. However, she will still cook a Lamb Roast for about three hours at 200-250°C and then say “that mustn’t have been very good lamb, its shrunk and its tough”. She can’t stand the thought of cooking it medium and letting it rest. My Dad’s specialty was cupcakes for school lunches. Have you ever had Neopolitan ice-cream with sprinkles and let it melt just enough to be able to mix it all though and you end up with a green-blue grey mess, well that’s what Dad’s cupcakes looked like that I had to take to school. I never even really cooked at home, my earliest memory is probably from first year high school when we were studying Home Economics and wanting to cook meals at home then. I think spaghetti bolognaise was the first think I cooked on my own, from an old Woman’s Weekly recipe card.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I became interested in the idea of cooking professionally and unfortunately my father never got to see me as a chef. I will admit I was seduced by that romanticised view of cooking portrayed in the movies. The alchemy or magic of food seemed sexy and exciting and in the early days of my career I did use it to entice women and set the mood, well one woman actually and it must have worked because she is sitting across from me now as I type. I realise the value of food, as I’ve said in past blogs, in every aspect of life but where did that come from? Recently I’ve been speaking to my mother about her parents and it seems my grandfather was quite the chef, so much so that if my grandmother was to buy pastry instead of making it from scratch he would not be pleased. I have very few memories of my grandfather, but I do know he is the one that began my love of tea- when I was very young he would give me the saucer from his tea that had collected any spills, to drink from. Having lived though the Great Depression and being on strike from work, as many were following the Second World War, my grandparents were frugal. If they didn’t grow it, catch or kill it, it didn’t end up on the dinner table. To this day my mum still has problems eating rabbit and lobsters because she ate so many of them as a child. My grandmother would make fabulous pies and casseroles and my grandfather loved cooking pickles and chutneys.

So, in today’s blog I am going to do something very personal and share my grandfather’s recipe for mustard pickles – just as he has written it and believe me although simple they are great!

Jack Vayne’s Pickles

½ as many onions as tomatoes
½ as many beans as onions
cauliflower or choko optional
Boil with a handful of salt until soft.
Strain.
¾ cover with vinegar
add 2 cups of sugar whilst boiling.
 
make a paste with a small amount of vinegar and
1 cup plain flour
1 tablespoon mustard
1 tablespoon curry powder
½ tablespoon turmeric
add to pot.

You need to cook the pickles for a further five minutes after adding the paste. These are great on home-made chicken rissole sandwiches …yummo!

Til next time, Peace and Good Eating

Food and the Movies

 Friday 17^th June, 2011.

Hello everyone. With the weather turning a bit nasty lately – strong winds, heavy rain and with two very young girls at home I haven’t ventured out on my days off too much in the last couple of weeks. It is perfect for snuggling up on the couch and watching a movie or two though. I recently watched Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café where a wife beating husband gets barbequed and served to a law enforcement officer looking for him and it was one of these cold and rainy days that I came to watch Julie & Julia. Now clearly this is not the kind of film that cleans up at the Oscars but it does have some great food scenes in it. It got me thinking of food in the movies and its portrayal. Food is a part of every human beings life, so it only stands to reason that food would feature in human art of every medium and since its earliest days film has done just that. From black and white Charlie Chaplin films to the latest cinema releases in every genre there is, food has repulsed, entranced and titillated our big screen experiences. Many first dates are a dinner and a movie, later in life Thursday nights became pizza and DVD night and how can anyone actually go to the cinema without the inclusion of freshly popped popcorn and creamy choc-tops or a box of malteasers? There are numerous blogs that have posted entries on the best food movies so I thought this week we might do the same, for a bit of fun, after a quick survey of some of the staff at Lexie’s this is what we came up with. How many of these films have you seen?

No Reservations –“I love this film.” Chef Michelle

Julie & Julia – “I love the first time Julie makes bruschetta, it looks so yummy.” Waitress Caitlin

Ratatouille – “I just love the passion of the little rat, its great.” Waitress Kim and “The scene where the rat is inside the boy’s hat like a puppetmaster recreating the soup.” Kitchen-hand Bodie

It’s Complicated – “There’s a heap of good food scenes in this film.” Barista Madeline

Coupé Deville – “The Dinner scene is awesome.” Barista Erin

Like Water for Chocolate – “I searched everywhere for this film, I absolutely adored the book.” Supervisor Stephanie

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone – “The scene where Dumbledore goes whoosh and all the food appears, love that.” Kitchen-hand James

Hook – “The pretend food fight, I used to love that as a kid.” Kitchen-hand Tyler

Not to be out done Doug, our owner and chief Barista offered up his top five films featuring food and they are:-

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) starring Helen Mirren and Richard Borst “I could watch this film again and again”

Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978) starring George Segal and Jacqueline Bisset  “The baked Alaska in this film is great”

Ratatouille (2007) the masterpiece created by Brad Bird and his Pixar team.

Tampopo (1985) starring Ken Watanabe

Chocolat (2000) starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp – Trish, our other owner and head Waitress also voted for this film, although I suspect much of that stems from her love of Johnny Depp. (My wife pipped up while I was typing this and said “What woman wouldn’t want Johnny Depp dipped in chocolate?”

As for me, well I like any film with food in it, I love the detail in Ratatouille it was a real love letter to the food industry, the fact the producers hired American Chef Thomas Keller as food consultant shows how much they wanted to get it right. The details are amazing – from the burns on the arms of the chefs to the textures of the raw ingredients. You would be hard pressed to find a better food film and its one of my favourites too. I love the scene in Meet Joe Black where Brad Pitt tries peanut butter for the first time. Waitress, Return To Me, Groundhog Day, Fools Rush In and Simply Irresistible all have great food scenes and the scene in Once Upon A Time In Mexico where Johnny Depp shoots the cook for making too good a Puerco Pibil dish I always find amusing. However my ultimate favourite has to be the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where Gene Wilder sings Pure Imagination while the kids eat candy flowers, mushrooms, grass, trees …just about everything.

Most of the above films are still available on DVD to buy or can be hired, so the next time its cold and raining, snuggle up and feed your mind’s appetite with a foodie film.

Til next week, Peace and Good Eating.