At the Collingwood Farmers’ Market yesterday I bought some duck, basically on a whim, from Milawa Chicken. I was remembering the gorgeous lightly smoked confit duck salad I’d had a Gerald’s a few weeks ago, and also I was looking for a filling for some dumplings to stock up the freezer.

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Monday night (Season 2 Episode 4) on Channel 7’s reality cooking show, My Kitchen Rules,  something happened that quite literally shocked me.  Did you see it?

Now I know that I and my foodie friends sometimes sit in the stratosphere pontificating about local, sustainable and ethical food.  We  don’t just blindly buy “organic” or “free range” and be done with it.  Nope we want to know WHY that <insert item> is labelled sustainable/ethical/organic.  We want to know the people who grow our food, and visit the farms where they grow it.  So sometimes, I guess we can be removed from the thoughts of the general populace.

But *surely* everyone knows that Blue Fin Tuna is endangered?

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Like much of Australia. Victoria has been having bizarre weather lately; hot and dry, hot and humid, pouring rain, it’s difficult to keep up.  What in spring looked like it was going to be a promising season, has ended up being a wash-out for many producers. I’ve heard of entire crops being washed away, fruit crops being reduced in quality due to too much rain/wind/heat depending on which week it was, and some very challenging growing conditions.

Thankfully – they keep on growing, and bring their deliciousness to the city to sell to us.

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Sights, sounds and tastes from childhood can seem so ephemeral, but appear to be hard wired. Since my mother’s death some 9 months ago a few things have bubbled up to my heart and head and set me to thinking about how the past influences the past – and the future.

If you grew up in South Australia you will surely remember visiting the butcher and being given a slice of Fritz as a treat.  Quite transparently a way for the butchers to charm the mothers (ahh the things that we have left by the wayside) to ensure return business *grin*.

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This week, as I was leaving the Collingwood Farmers’ Market, I spied an interesting sign promising vanilla pods from Papua New Guinea.

Turns out it was a fundraiser for a small community off the coast of PNG which is being forced to move off their coral atoll, Carteret.  This atoll is about 80km from the coast off Bougainville, a larger island off the coast of PNG.  Carteret atoll has been submerging for the last few decades.

So their taro swamp is salty, their land is being eroded and the living conditions are such that an evacuation of the atoll is underway.  As they move to the mainland however, they find themselves without a source of income, or food. The elders of the community have set up an organisation called Tulele Peisa or “sailing the winds together” to help and support these villagers.

A group of villagers on a near by island grow vanilla orchids in their yards. With the help of the Australian Conservation Foundation, with sales facilitated by Friends of the Earth, and stall space from the Farmers’ Markets, this sustainably produced vanilla is being brought direct “to market” to support this organisation.

The pods aren’t as soft as some of the very expensive ones I’ve bought – but at $10 a bag – which in my case contained 10 long straight pods, and another 5 that were shorter of curlier, you can’t argue with the value.  I made a poaching syrup today with the pods and they smell quite delicious.  And I feel very ‘rich” with so many to use! (and a little bit virtuous).

The pods will be on sale again and Gasworks Farmers’ Market next week, and if there are any left, you might see them at the Twilight Xmas markets. A real case of buying when you see it at the farmers’ markets as it might not be around long.

If you’d like to donate to the cause you can do so via Friends of the Earth – or look out for some of this fabulous vanilla.

The first time I can remember coming across Clafoutis was in the early 1990’s and I had a housemate who knew a lot about food, and who tried lots of new dishes and loved to bake.  One afternoon we decided to try a cherry clafoutis recipe, which I think was from her Maggie Beer book.

I love what Maggie has done for the Australian/German cooking traditions of the Barossa, and have grown to love her style of cooking, but to a fairly new cook, some of her recipes were… well.. challenging I guess.  They can be quite loose with their measurements at times.   We’d had a few recipes that just didn’t really work until we played around with them a bit. From reading the description of the dish I was expecting a kind of tea cake around fruit, maybe like a lemon delicious?  But the batter, well  – it was weird, and very runny.  I think we actually threw it out, knowing enough about cakes to know that it was never going to bake, but not knowing enough about clafoutis to know that that was how it was supposed to be.

The Abbotsford Convent Farmers’ Market this week dished me up some gloriously ripe cherries from Smith’s, the Early Burlat variety.  I like to be inspired by what I can buy at the market, and a kilo of ripe cherries HAD to be inspirational.  As much as I like them fresh, I figured this was my chance to right the wrongs of the past, and be brave with the batter.

I consulted the french baking oracle, Michel Roux, but I didn’t like the sound of one single egg, and being baked in a tart shell, so I expanded my research and cobbled this together from a variety of sources.

• Ingredients
• 450g of pitted cherries
• 4 eggs
• 75 grams castor sugar
• 330ml single cream (I used Schultz Organic cream, which is quite thick, so I used 1/3 milk)
• 35 grams plain flour
• 1 tsp vanilla.
• Method:
• Preheat the oven to 160° Centigrade. Butter an overproof shallow casserole dish.
  Places eggs, sugar, cream and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until combined.
  Add the flour and whisk until smooth.
  Pour cherries into the casserole dish and spread evenly.
  Pour over the custard.
  Bake for 50 – 60 mins until set.

It was deliciously eggy and cherry-y and I can’t wait to make it again.

I had spied the cumquat tree in a friend’s back yard a week ago, and had been craving the preserved cumquats I had eaten at The Hardware Societe one morning on their famous brioche.  There was also a thought about making mustard fruits and cumquat mustard fruits are my favourite, and so a plan was hatched!

I am so lucky that I know a lot of people who love food as much as I do, and I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to tempt them to come and help pick the cumquats, and make them into something entirely delicious.  I mentioned this to Benjamin Cooper, Head Chef and St Ali at Night, and he mentioned a duck with Chilli cumquat marmalade…I reckon I could eat some of that!  and some Cumquat Curd, and marmalade, and the aforementioned mustard fruits and preserved cumquats.

We descended in the middle of the afternoon of a stunning Spring day, and picked the 5 Seville oranges that were still hanging around…I hope they produce enough juice for Anna’s bitter orange curd.  Then we contemplated the backyard, the chook, Bill the happiest dog on the planet, and the cumquat tree.  It didn’t look that large.

We had a break for afternoon tea and chit chat about food (of course!) then back out to pick these delicious looking cumquats.

We estimated that we ended up with about 20 kilos of cumquats.  More than enough for us, and to spread around to a few “special friends”.  I’ll follow up with a post on what we made with them.

Thank you Felicity, we’ll see you at apricot, mulberry, fig and grape time!

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There are times when I am very grateful for my mother’s approach to feeding my family as I was growing up.  Alhough Dad’s parents were British and Australian (4th or 5th gen); and my Mum was 6th Gen White Australian, we rarely ate the kind of food my friends often complain about – “English Style Coooking”.   The kind of cooking many of us grew up with – overcooked vegetables, grey roasts, soggy puddings and spam.

Thanks largely due to the Margaret Fulton Cookbook we had a varied diet of fried rice, curry (albeit with sultanas and Keen’s curry powder), pink lamb, lasagne and whatever took my mum’s fancy. So it’s interesting for me to “discover” traditional English foods through the, admitedly distorted, lens of Heston Blumenthal and, closer to home Matt Wilkinson.

And I’m liking what I see, and taste.

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