The Tribal Tomato

The Croque-en-bouche

I swore every year I wouldn’t do it again.

Why? Because weeks afterwards, I would find crusted chocolate icing underneath the bench top. Electric blue fingerprints on a corner kitchen tile. And dried butter cake residue stuck fast to the blender that I had been too tired to clean up on the day.

The Book was to blame. According to this blogger, who is cooking her way through it, there are 104 cakes in it. Yes, you know the one: The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.

We would take it out a whole month before each of our children’s birthdays. They would pore through it, pointing to the cake with dollies sitting in jelly, or the train with its quaint lamington carriages. Gently, gently, I would steer them to the cakes I thought would be easy to make. Not so gently, they steered me straight back to the ones that required electric blue food colouring and intricate decorations that didn’t seem to sit on the shelves of our local supermarket. And the clean-up afterwards; it didn't bear thinking about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

But what joy this little yearly ritual bought them, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to say no when they asked again and again for another homemade cake. And so, each year, on the kitchen bench our children sat, among the chaos of ingredients – and they helped to stir and decorate with their sticky little fingers, all the while fighting over who would lick the bowl. And even if we strayed a little (or a lot in some cases) from the bible of children's birthday cakes, they didn't complain.

But then something happened when my daughter was 12.

She asked if she could make her brother's birhtday cake. All by herself.

I confess: I felt a twinge of loss.

And a sense of relief.

She’d taken the baton.

And I was relegated to the sink.

Our now 13-year-old daughter is quite the baker. This year, she and her friend even offered to make the cake for their bestie’s birthday party.

I reached for The Book.

But she reached for another. I shuddered.

She flicked through it, a whole month before the party. And again in coming weeks. She spoke to me about the possible choices. Was I listening? Only in that I'm-too-busy-cooking-dinner-and-not-really-concentrating-kind-of-way.

Finally, she decided. 

As the date drew near I looked over the ingredients. I read the pages of instructions.

And I decided that Zumbo's croque-en-bouche was impossible.

 

But it was too late. Her heart was set. 

Almost three dozen eggs. Vanilla beans.  Two tubs of glucose syrup. And more. Sixty dollars later, we were ready to start. I drew the line at unsprayed chemical free flowers and a croque-en-bouch cone. That was going too far, even for a budding pastry chef.

The party was at 6.30pm. The girls met in our kitchen at 9am that morning.

They piped and baked the choux pastry. They whipped the crème patisserie. They set the caramel base. They boiled the glucose syrup. They burnt their hands in the hot toffee. And at 5.30, it was like the frantic last minute on Masterchef; while one was building the tower, another was sticking on decorations. As the girls went off to put on their party gear, sweaty and exhausted, I was madly wrapping the whole creation in angel hair, not caring any more how much sticky toffee mixture was making its way on all the surrounding surfaces.

I drove the girls and the cake, balanced precariously on a nervous lap, to the party. The guests ‘oohhed’ and ‘aaahhed’ in a suitably enthusiastic fashion. And my daughter and her friend looked so proud. They set out to conquer Zumbo's Croque-en-bouche. And they did.

But guess who still had to do the dishes?

 

Afternoons in Ithaka

Some years ago, I was in one of my favourite bookshops and saw author Arnold Zable, who I’d met briefly on a few occasions. I had long admired Zable’s storytelling ability, and his stance on refugees. I made my way up to him to congratulate him on the release of his new book, Sea of Many Returns. As I bowled up to him, I realised too late I’d interrupted a moment – he’d been staring at his book on the shelf, in a kind of reverie; clearly it was the first time he was seeing it there. I mumbled my congratulations and slinked off sheepishly, feeling like a stalker in a b-grade movie.

It takes a long time for a book to reach a bookshelf. And the moment of seeing it there for the first time is so fleeting. Now I’ve experienced it myself, I would do anything to give Arnold back his moment in all its fullsome glory.

For me, the process of creating a book started some years ago with nothing more than a vague idea that I would write about growing up in a Greek family, and on the many trips I took to Greece to find out where ‘home’ really was. Of course it would involve food. And lots of it. There was always the question: are these ideas/stories/grains enough to carry a book? I believe there’s no way of knowing the answer to this until you start writing – a word, a sentence, a page. Soon you might have some chapters and even a proposal, which you might show to a few people. They usually tell you where you’ve gone wrong (why do they have to do that?), and what you can do better. When you’ve honed the words, your agent puts these out to a publisher. Then you wait. And wait some more. Finally, a miracle happens and a very nice publisher asks if you could please provide another 60,000 words or more in the same vein. Something that has a beginning, a middle and an end; preferably something that might move people just a little.*

So you sit on your laptop day after day. Try to relax enough to let the magic alchemy happen. You let the words bubble up from somewhere deep within; sometimes inspired by a photograph, a strong memory; a smell. When you lose track of time, you know you’ve reached that elusive place that is the ‘zone’, where nothing else matters except the words flowing onto the page. A few hours later, that particular story comes organically to an end, and you think you’ve nailed a good first draft. It's your story, your voice, your experience. That’s all the matters.

You do more of this most days, trying all the while to ignore that irritating voice that pipes up occasionally– it says, ‘no one wants to know that you ate the thyroid glands of young lambs when you were a 10’. You push through it, feeling the satisfaction of stories finding their rhythm; chapters connecting with each other; the beginning and end eventually forming a circle, just like a Greek dance. You dig up poems you haven’t read for a while; re-discover anew how much you love the lyricism of the Greek language; wish you’d concentrated more in Greek school. Your wrists and back start to hurt but you keep going regardless, pruning the original draft. You shift a chapter here; cut something back there. Finally, after many months, you have something that resembles a manuscript.

Despite wanting to hold on to it for a few years to let the dust settle and fix those pesky dangling modifiers, your deadline comes around; you really do have to press the ‘send’ button. Some months later, your editor’s report uses words like ‘beautiful subtlety’ and ‘artful way’ to describe your book. But it also says your story has several individuals named George and half a dozen named Kathy – it’s hard to tell who is who. There is more work to be done. You have to explain things, add a chapter, prune a little more. And so begins the editing process, back and forth over months. The changes get tinier, until you’re staring at a bunch of typeset pages that include your husband’s beautiful photos. Your baby is nearly ready to see the light of day.

So you’re standing at your favourite bookshop and your son says, ‘I’m proud of you Mum.’ And your daughter beams. Your husband takes a few photos and then you shoo them away, a little embarrassed. But secretly pretty chuffed. This is your moment.

*That's in really insy winsy writing in the contract.

Afternoons in Ithaka is now on sale. You can purchase it at all good bookshops, such as ABC Books, Readings and Hill of Content, where the book will be launched on the Thursday 13 February.

For upcoming book- and food-related events and musings, go to the Tribal Tomato Facebook page.

Happy birthday to The Tribal Tomato

What a neglectful mother I am: The Tribal Tomato had it's first birthday today, and I almost missed it. After reading over the first heady blog, I thought it might be timely to point out my favourite ten entries:

1. Making passata
2. Dying eggs and what to do with the leftover chocolate ones
3. Making pasta, now war
4. Cubby houses and sentimental children
5. My grandparents' village home
6. The death of our washing machine
7. Recipe for a pie fight
8. My guilty fetish for Zumba
9. Ten saucy shared food experiences for the bedroom
10. Olives on the window sill

Thank you to all who have supported the blog (I know you are reading by the 5000 pageviews clocked up on my stats page, even if you don't always 'out' yourselves!), for your comments here and on Facebook, and for indulging my passion for all things food, family and connection. Looking forward to the next year and beyond!