The Tribal Tomato

The village loaves

A whole season has passed since my post on our Roman adventure in our suburban garden – the building of our wood-fired oven.

Spring is now but days away; bright yellow freesias have snuck their coquettish heads from the earth, the garden beds have more silverbeet than we know what to do with, and the wood-fire oven has produced its first loaves.  Despite it still not being quite finished.

But I’m running ahead of myself. Let me backtrack to a few weeks ago. Before we could have loaves, we needed fire. On the first lighting, daughter Dolores and husband George go through a whole box of matches before they look at each other, concerned. How does one light a fire?

I muscle my way between them. Perhaps I even say in a patronising voice, ‘The woman might have left the village, but the village hasn't left the woman’.  I feel confident that I can channel my mother and grandmother here, tap into my deeply-ingrained Greek rural roots.

I bundle up bits of The Age, dry rosemary braches and kindling in an arrangement I remember from my sepia-toned Greek school reader, circa 1977. With the lighting of the first match, the fire takes hold. My husband and daughter are impressed – I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I can see a look of admiration in Dolores’ eyes. Mum knows how to light a fire.

As I watch the flames getting bigger, I feel a deep-seated pleasure. On this, the first day of firing, George and I tend to the fire in turns. I stoke it carefully, blowing it when it threatens to die down; exulting as the flames reel up when I place another log onto it. I push the fire around the hearth, curing the virgin bricks. All of this feels strangely right. The smell gets into the wool of my jumper, into my hair, so that the fire follows me even when I leave it.

If I’m undisputed queen of fire, George is the undisputed king of bread: he’s been baking since Dolores was a baby. A week later, when the bricks have cured after a few slow firings, we brave making bread. George prepares ten plump loaves, which he leaves to rise under blankets on the kitchen table. When the oven temperature reaches 300°C, he places them gently into the oven with his new long-handled spatula. And, as we don’t yet have a door, he seals the oven with fireproof bricks. Like eager childrem, we watch the temperature gauge to see if the oven will retain the heat. It does.  

Fourty minutes later, George removes the bricks. The smell that exudes from the oven takes me instantly, blissfully back to my grandmother’s village, where I had watched her bake bread more than thirty years ago. And the loaves, oh the loaves – hot orbs of crusty, doughy bliss.

Now I know without a doubt - it's been worth the wait.

George has been using Tom Jaine’s Making Bread at Home book for many years -  it's covered in dried bits of dough. For more on Tom Jaine and his philosophy and obsession with bread, as well as numerous recipes, see this article in  The Independant.

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Solace soup

Solace soup

The broth is rich, the flavours clean and simple. The soup warms me, sates a deeper need for consolation -- it brings me back to myself, grounds me. I revel in the taste, the sensation of it as it trickles down my throat. I scoop up the vegetables and the rice at the bottom, plump with the fish stock. There is other food on the table, but this is all I need.

Just over a year ago, days after my lovely friend Katerina had passed away, I ate a fish broth soup that her aunt Angie had made. It was one of the many offerings that would be made by Katerina’s family and friends to honour her life, and to help keep her in our thoughts, days, weeks, months after she had passed.

Of course, I needed to know how to make this aromatic soup. ‘Please may I have the recipe?’ I asked Aunt Angie. She insisted I would need to come and see how she made it, perhaps after her husband had been fishing. But things happen in busy families – the birth of a grandson, yet another funeral – and the months ticked over before we had a chance to meet. Soon we would be commemorating the anniversary of Katerina’s passing. This prompted us to action, and so one morning I crossed the Westgate and made my way to her home.

As the soup bubbled, we looked at family photos, picked figs from the garden, sipped at Greek coffee. At lunchtime, we ate soup at Aunty Angie’s table. It tasted as delicious as the first time I’d had it. As I took my leave, I was loaded up with homemade bread, an oversized tub of the soup, a bag of garden greens and a few peaches from someone’s tree.

 Now I’m wondering – was it the really the soup that gave me solace, or was it the person that made it? 

Download Aunty Angie's fish soup recipe.

 

The smells of summer

There are two smells I strongly associate with summer: that of zucchinis and tomatoes sizzling in a pan, and the smell of meat on a barbecue.

Our backyard is a treasure-trove of edible pleasures at this time of year thanks to my green-thumbed husband: fulsome eggplants, aromatic basil, pert zucchinis, juicy tomatoes, wee cucumbers, rosy peaches and the odd whitefly-afflicted corncob that’s a bit sickly-looking but still edible. With all this prolific bounty, our charcoal-fuelled barbecue is getting quite a workout, as is that of our neighbours judging from the smells wafting over the fence. I must say that after all the excesses of the festive season, it’s nice to load up the barbie with produce that has travelled from our garden to our barbecue (usually via the kitchen).

I’ve worked out that in order for vegetables not to dry out or burn on the barbecue, they benefit from a fair bit of basting. I’ve been marinading them in olive oil, lemon, oregano, salt and pepper. I regularly ‘reapply’ this marinade during the cooking process, and feel as if I am liberally covering them in sunscreen (another of summer’s quintessential smells) to protect their delicate flesh.

My beloved cousin Stathis in Greece has another Mediterranean-inspired marinade for vegetables on the barbecue: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, freshly grated tomato and sugar (1 tablespoon sugar to each litre of marinade). For best results, he suggests marinading vegetables at least two hours before cooking.  He feels that vegetable souvlakia make for a far superior ‘souvlaki’ to those with meat. The literal translation of ‘souvlaki’ is ‘little skewer’. He reminded me that the humble souvlaki has many guises, from skewers endowed with pieces of kid goat, to those with artichokes. Makes me want to run off to Greece this very minute.

 

Stathis with Australiana tea towel in the foreground, and barbecue in the background, Kiparissia, Greece

Stathi's mother, my thiea Kanella, visited us a few years ago from Greece. She was very taken with our public barbecues in parks and gardens: she felt it was very generous of councils to make them available to patrons free of charge. She said that if she had such barbecues in her town, she (and many of her friends) would never cook at home.

Hail then the humble barbecue, be it in our backyards or public spaces; and blessed be the bounty that our garden is producing to put atop it.

Tea and sympathy

It's hard for me to sit down and have a cup of tea without thinking about the things in my day needing to be done running through my mind like a stream of consciousness to-do list on steroids--the reports to write, the messes to tidy up, the meals to cook. Often I will drink my tea standing up, or take it from the garden (where I would prefer to sit all afternoon daydreaming) to my office to check my email as I take the last few sips. Sometimes, when I get carried away with replying to the last urgent missive or three, I realise that half an hour has passed, and that the tea has gone cold. I constantly have to pull myself up about slowing down, about sitting with the moment, about trusting that what really needs to be done will get done.

I sat down to a cup of tea earlier this week, a little exhausted by the demands of kids on school holidays (can it be day 2 only?) and a tad resentful that I have to squeeze my paid work commitments into the gaps. So I take myself off to get a grip. The sensible, intuitive part of me says that if I get away from it all for a few minutes, it won't seem so bad afterwards. The lounge room is dark and I sneak the papers in, hoping that my kids won't see me.

There's not a great deal that excites me in the paper these days but I chanced on an article by Annie Smithers, owner of Annie Smither's Bistrot in Kyneton. It's about tea, and dreams, and loss, and expectation. It transported me to her world just for a few moments, away from my own four walls. When I walked outside again, I noticed that the pomegranate tree was flowering. That the beetroots were lush in their beds. That the kids had settled. The big revelation was that everything didn't need to happen right now. I felt as if I'd woken from a long sleep and smelt the tea leaves finally.

So, if you too need a bit of mindfulness therapy, get yourself a cuppa, sit down, and clear your mind with Tea and Sympathy by Annie Smithers.  

Picture: Jennifer Soo

 

The last backyard spanakopita maker in Collingwood

‘Ella, mazepsa spanakia,’ her voice bellowed from our answering machine, as if there was a bad connection. She’d rung to tell me she had picked spinach, silverbeet and dill from her garden. She could show me how to make spanakopita, spinach pie. Was tomorrow okay?  

The message was from octogenarian theia Giorgia, quite possibly the last backyard spanakopita maker in Collingwood. Her spinach pie is legendary amongst our friends and relatives. It is bursting with greens and herbs, creamy fetta and ricotta. But the pièce de résistance is the crisp layered homemade pastry, oozing with butter. To eat one of her pies is to experience decadence in its most earthy, aromatic form.

The family and I dropped our usual Saturday morning chores to learn from the mistress of spinach pies. We figured theia Giorgia wouldn’t be around forever, and the minutiae of our weekend could wait. We swung by to pick up my mother, who didn’t want to miss the action.

Walking down the narrow path along the side of theia Giorgias’s single-fronted weatherboard, I was transported back to my own childhood home just streets away. Ours was a jungle of concrete, with edibles covering every inch of remaining space. In theia’s garden, there is a chaotic array of pumpkins, silverbeet, herbs, spring onions and beetroot along the path. Negotiating freshly-washed sheets, we cram into the tiny kitchen.  Preparations have already begun.

‘Welcome. You’re a bit late. I’ve chopped the greens and made the pastry. Wipe the outside table and we’ll get started’. She hands me a sponge. 

The pastry had already been made? How was I to learn? And yet, I sense a recipe of sorts would materialise from my mentor eventually. Soon a neighbour arrives, Kalliopi. She carries a bag of leeks from her garden and three industrial-sized baking trays. How many backyard spanakopita makers are there in Collingwood?

We are ready to begin. Before long, Kalliopi and theia Giorgia are bickering over the correct technique for rolling out the dough with the long stick.

When I finally muscle my way between them, my movements are clumsy and tentative. Kalliopi, the more formidable of the matriarchs, corrects me until I finally get the hang of it. I roll out the silky mound of pasty: turning it, rolling it and turning it again in smooth strokes until it is the size of a large pizza. We brush the flat disc with melted butter, and then pull the pasty gently until it stretches across the table, like a pale, translucent skin.

As a child, I had watched this done by older women, admiring their slow, careful movements. I can’t help feeling I have finally ‘arrived’ into the sisterhood of filo makers.

If I’m to be a true initiate, I need to know what goes in the pastry. Theia Giorgia says, ’About two kilograms of plain flour, some water, a cup of vegetable oil and a touch of salt. This will make enough for six large pies’.

When she goes back inside, Kalliopi counters: ‘Her pastry is not doughy enough. You need more flour. And then you have to let it sit until it’s done.’ How long would that be?  ‘About the time it takes you to do your chores.’

My two teachers were themselves shown how to make spanakopita by other women in the neighbourhood. The original recipe came from the north of Greece, where they specialise in this filo (literally meaning 'sheets') technique. They stand back as I take the lead. My mother looks on, proud to watch me handle the pastry with growing confidence, perhaps a little put out that she was not the one to teach me. The women gossip about the other spanakopita makers: who drinks too much, who suffers from ‘nerves’, who is not well.  Many are in their late seventies or early eighties. But most still manage to make spanakopita.

We cut the pastry into squares with the rim of a spoon, and layer each of these, buttered side down, to form a mound. We pat this down and put it aside. Finally, we have a dozen mounds.

We roll six of them out again to line the bottom of each pan and fill the shells with the thinly chopped silverbeet, spinach, leek, dill, fetta, ricotta and seasoning. It appears the amounts vary depending on what you have to hand, and personal preference. Again, my questions about quantities are furnished with the vaguest of answers.

Finally, we cover the greens with pastry and press the edges down. The job is complete. We sit down to a pie that’s just come out of the oven.

It’s superb as always. I’m given three to take home. I clutch my packages, pleased I now know how to make spanakopita, albeit with only the vaguest of recipes.

I’ve joined the sisterhood. Now it’s up to me to find my own way.

 

 

 

 

 

The Pumpkin Healer

My first instinct when someone gets sick is to feed them. I suspect it stems from some primal urge to nourish them back to health. Or perhaps it’s a deep-seated insecurity that I can’t offer anything else other than that which gives me great comfort–food.  At any rate, when someone is sick, they usually appreciate the gift of a sustaining meal, irrespective of the neurotic motivations of the giver.

Recently, I had both my mother and mother-in-law feeling under the weather. Of course I went into cooking overdrive. And what more comforting food than soup (apart from Vegemite on toast of course)?

So while my beloved heads out for a bit of late night pumpkin shopping, I make a stock from chicken frames, celery, onions, carrots, thyme, peppercorns and a bay leaf. The smoky flavour of stock made from bacon bones works better with pumpkin soup, but there were no such bones to be found in our freezer, so chicken it had to be. Many people are put off making their own stock because it's time-consuming. With all this comfort cooking I've been doing of late, I've realised all it takes is a few minutes to get it going and then it happily bubbles away by itself. I am going so far as to add 'Big Stock Pot' to my Christmas wish list this year.

Soon eight kilos of pumpkin materialise on the kitchen bench. I spend the next 20 minutes de-seeding it, divesting it of its tough skin and chopping it. No great suggestions here on how to make this task easier, except to say don't be tempted to daydream, and watch that the knife doesn't slip.

The kitchen smells oh-so-comforting and the windows have misted over. After the stock has been cooking about an hour (it could do with a bit more but it's getting late) I strain it through a muslin cloth into three pots. I then divvy up the pumpkin, some potatoes, a clove of garlic and an onion. The stock should just cover the ingredients. I let the whole concoction boil until the pumpkin is soft. The next morning, I puree the lot in batches and pour into three casserole dishes; one for my mother-in-law, one for my mother, and one for our family. Everyone is delighted with their soothing pumpkin soup, and I feel good that I've catered for at least a few meals for us all.

'Cook. Feed. Heal.' How does that sounds as a winter motto?

 

 

A weeping sky and peppery soup

Can the sky weep? Can the clouds be blue? It certainly feels like it today in Melbourne. It's a curl-up-with-a-good-book-in-bed kind of day. I started the food memoir Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton last night, and if the first few chapters are anything to go by, it’s going to be a ripper. But one must be productive and not give in to all of one’s whims, especially when there is work to be done in the office of Writing Spirit. Still, I believe we should give in at least to some whims, even on a weekday. There’s no reason why a modern gal can’t slow cook and earn a living at the same time, especially when she has the luxury of working from a home office. I simply must make soup.

There are a few bacon bones in the freezer, plenty of carrots and a somewhat limp half celery in the fridge, and a few onions and garlic on the bench top. And joy of joys – there’s a pack of split peas in the pantry.

By 7am, all of the above apart from the split peas has been put on slow boil in a large pot of water. At first cup-of-tea time at 10.30, I strain the whole concoction through a muslin cloth into another pot, and add the washed split peas. At cup-of-tea time number 2 a few hours later (ah the joys of being my own boss), I pick the meat off the bacon bones and add it to the soup, along with salt, pepper, a drizzle of olive oil and a few of our home-grown chillies. The peas are by now soft and the soup is looking deliciously silky.

By 12.30, I’ve done half a day’s work (at least in the paid sense) and the soup is ready. I slice some dense sourdough bread, find a wedge of ricotta in the fridge, scoop up some olives, and get out the olive oil. By the time my mother arrives soon after, we sit down to a decadent weekday feast. The sun decides to pop its head out for a few minutes (the weather sure is alive today). Even the blue/grey clouds don’t seem so grim. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone or anything feeling grim when they have peppery pea and ham soup in their belly.

The fertile fruit

She has no trouble attracting a mate, what with her blushing scarlet skin and full, sensuous body. Prising her open is quite the challenge, as she protects her virtue very well. Cut through the fleshy exterior to find a thin, bitter tasting membrane. Peel this back to reveal the real treasure - her glistening ruby red seeds.

Welcome to the pleasures of eating a pomegranate, the ‘fertility fruit’ originating in Persia. Such was her beauty that she (or rather 'it') warranted a mention in the Book of Exodus, Homer’s Hymns and Shakespeare. The pomegranate is so lusciously fulsome, it reminds me of a fertility figure we saw some years back at the ancient Tarxien Temples in Malta.

Not only are they beautiful, but pomegranates are very good from you, with claims that they have everything from anti-ageing to anti-cancer properties.

It’s Autumn and pomegranates are flourishing in Melbourne. The seeds can sometimes be bitter and sour, but when you hit on a good one, the seeds will be sweet and aromatic. The best one I have had is one that my mother bought over recently.

The pomegranate tree in her garden grew from a tree we had in the garden of our first home. This in turn was given to us by a friend’s dad. I love this whole ‘going around’ business, as if the tree has its own history that can be traced back through the hands that have passed it on. If you come across a tree that bears good fruit, take a cutting. Simply snap off a branch from the bottom of the tree, at the point where it shoots out from the stem. Place this in a glass of water for a few days, then in a pot until it sprouts leaves. Plant into the ground. Say a little prayer to the fertility goddess and hope for the best.

How can you use the pomegranate seeds I hear you ask? Eat them a la naturale (my daughter sits there for ages, prising the seeds out), toss them in a salad, or make a sweet pomegranate syrup. In Middle Eastern cooking, a tangy pomegranate syrup is used to add flavour to stews.

Finally, for those of you wondering how to prise the pomegranate open, simply insert a knife into the flower-like top – when this is about an inch into the flesh, gently twist the knife and the pomegranate will break open in two – but be careful, your blushing beauty is very delicate.

Sciroppo di Pomegranate (Pomegranate Syrup)*

2kg of pomegranates, 4kg of sugar

Break the pomegranates and squeeze by hand. Leave juice in a pot for 24 hours. Filter through a muslin cloth. Place in a pot with twice its weight of sugar. Boil for 20 minutes. Allow to cool and bottle.

PS I haven’t yet tried this recipe – if any one does, please write in and let Tribal Tomato know how you went.

*from Preserving the Italian Way by Pietro Demaio

The Gnocchi Grinch

For the last decade or so, we have had gnocchi for dinner every Thursday night. It’s a family ritual/bonding/comfort kind of thing. Any suggestion of change on my part has met with heated resistance from our children. 'Get back in your box you Gnocchi Grinch' is the subtext of their more vocal protestations.

People often ask if we make our own. We don’t. Mostly, we buy a ubiquitous brand from the supermarket. At best, we buy it freshly made from our local market. Slathered in passata, it’s passable.

In keeping with our newfound Make Pasta, Not War motto over the holidays, we invited our neighbour’s kids over to make gnocchi. The idea was that their parents would visit to taste the results later that night. I imagined eight people happily tucking into homemade gnocchi, perhaps with a salad and baked vegetables as a side.  A no-frills dinner party.

The day before we executed this brilliant plan, I spoke to a friend of Italian background, whose mother makes gnocchi. I was somewhat perturbed to find that making gnocchi is a hit-and-miss exercise, as it often disintegrates at the boiling stage. And this was coming from a seasoned nonna. Should I have a back-up plan? Yes. Did I have time to shop for and cook an alternative meal for two families? No.

That night, my daughter and I looked up numerous cookbooks for a recipe. It was decision time: Eggs or no eggs? Semolina or flour? Baked or boiled? I was astounded at how such a deceptively simple little dumpling could be so complicated.

We went with the recipe for dummies. Stephanie Alexander’s had only flour, potatoes and salt. The process seemed simple too: just boil potatoes, run then through a potato ricer or food mill (read grater for those of us whose kitchens are gadget poor) and mix with flour and a sprinkling of salt.

The next day, with eager young charges by my side, I read more closely: ‘With one hand, sprinkle potato with some flour and, using the heel of the other hand, work it in. The skill is to be as deft and quick as possible.’ I look at the kids. Could they be deft and quick? Maybe ‘cute and clumsy’ was more within their skill set. My daughter doesn’t help: ‘Mum, this isn’t going to work’, she says with conviction as we start mixing the flour in.

‘I need a little bit of positive here’, I snap back. Is it too late to get to the supermarket to implement plan B? We persevere. The kitchen turns into a sticky potato/flour zone but the kids are having great fun.

We manage to turn out four trays of ill-formed dumplings. Later that day, our neighbours come over. While the adults have a glass of wine, the two older kids cook the pasta in batches. We watch proudly from the couch. The verdict? ‘Absolutely scrumptious,’ says this Gnocchi Grinch.

You too can create such light and velvety gnocchi from Stephanie's recipe (we didn't use the burnt sage butter sauce, but this also sounds delicious). Bon appetit.

Olives on the window sill, Katerina's photo on the mantle piece

In the winter, you offered hot cups of mountain tea as we sat and talked on the couch, and silverbeet from the garden to take home. In the spring, you brought cake, and a few zuchinnis to go. In the summer, it was baklava, and cool drinks, and tomatoes. Most recently, a jar of homemade green olives and a pomegranate from your autumn garden.

All this, as I sat with your daughter, my dear friend, Katerina. Many times she lay on the couch, too tired or nauseated to sit up. Sometimes you sat with us, but mostly you sat in the other room, to give us space. Always, you gave me a little something from your garden to take home with me.

Recently, at the hospital, when the doctors told us her body was shutting down, we couldn’t eat at first – how can one think of food at times like this? But the body doesn’t let you lament for too long. Soon, we bought in all manner of comfort food to place on the table in the hospital common room: loaves of bread, chocolate; biscuits; cheese. And a pomegranate, which your son pulled apart and offered around to everyone. The food sustained us as the hours turned into days.

In the days after Katerina died, we came in a dark-clad parade to your home, bearing biscuits, spirits, jars of coffee. We drank the granular Greek brew as we talked, cried, smiled at the little things we remembered. A friend bought vats of bean stew and rice–more comfort food to warm our bellies.

And after the funeral, family and friends carried in trays of fried eggplant and spinach pies, okra and zucchinis, fish and calamari, baked vegetables and salads for the wake.  There was enough food, and more besides, to feed the many hundreds that arrived that day to honour her memory. She would have delighted in the feast, basked in the attention for sure.

Now, a week later, your half-empty jar of olives is still on the kitchen window. Katerina’s photo is on the mantle piece. I feel a little lost, not quite sure what to do with myself in the void.

When things have settled, I vow to come back to your place, bringing with me a few bottles of the new season’s passatta, perhaps some homemade pesto–an insubstantial, trivial offering in the face of your grief I know, but all I can think to do. Katerina won't be on the couch. We'll probably go out to the garden and talk about what you've planted. And I'm willing to bet you'll pick something for me to take home.

Katerina Tzikas, daughter, sister, aunty, godmother, niece, cousin, friend, passed away on the 17^th March, 2012. She was a very special woman, as are her beautiful family. Our thoughts are with you all.