Lamingtons & Lasagna

Update: Australia’s first Italian cookbook

The lovely folk at SBS Radio’s Italian program have joined the appeal to help find Australia’s first Italian cookbook – La Cucina Continentale. Carlo Oreglia interviewed me, and you can hear the interview – and me mangle the beautiful Italian language – around the 38 minute mark of this morning’s program.

Thanks both to Carlo for the interview, and the awesome James Panichi for helping me get the word out.

The quest continues…

Tags: 1930s, fascists, first australian continental cookery book, la cucina continentale, sbs radio

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Categories First Australian Continental Cookbook, la cucina continentale, PhD dramas

Australia’s first Italian cookbook – MIA

2 Apr

Every so often you make a discovery. Something you think no one else knows. This makes you happy, so very, very happy.

Being a PhD student is a bit of a drudge most of the time. There are books to find, notes to take, references to record, forms to complete and reading, so much reading, some of it interesting, much of it leading to a lifelong hatred of anyone whose name comes prefaced by the words “French philosopher”.

But when that moment happens, the point of a new discovery, you forget about the references and the forms, you even forget that your annual salary is below the poverty line, and you think it’s all worth it. For you are now making a real contribution to your field. It’s you they are going to reference and your name they are going to struggle to spell correctly in EndNote or Mendeley (For the record: C-A-M-M-A-R-A-N-O).

This happened to me quite recently. It was good for a bit. And then it all went to shit. Here’s how it unfolded:

Working at the State Library of Victoria, I was examining a 1930s cookbook called the First Australian Continental Cookery Book. While the book says its about European cooking, there seem to be more Italian recipes than anything else, and after I read:

It is time for Australians to realise, in fact, that what one may call Mediterranean cookery has much to offer them. Italian cookery, for instance, embodies ideas, aims and methods that have not only been ripening for literally thousands of years, but have been doing so under climatic conditions far more closely resembling those of Australia than do the British.

I somehow deduced this book had to be written by an Italian. In fact, I half thought it might be my Uncle Tony. But with no author listed, I looked into the publisher – the Cosmopolitan Publishing Company – and found that the same company published a bunch of other Italian-related books. Dig just that bit deeper and guess what, the company is run by a bunch of known Italian fascists.

This is seriously good stuff. I’m feeling pretty great about what I’ve found, and then the cake gets iced. By the same publisher, I find in the NLA’s catalogue, published in the 1930s as well, La Cucina Continentale. I think I may well have just stumbled upon Australia’s first Italian cookbook. All I have to do is go to Canberra and check it out.

Happy days! La Cucina Continentale in the NLA's catalogue.

So off to the nation’s fine capital I go. When I get to the NLA, I become a member, request the book and spend 45 minutes looking at the exhibition next door while some hairy librarian type – they are always hairy – fetches it for me. I log back into the computer to check the status of the book, but see just one word – Missing. I think I stop breathing for a second. Missing. I go and tell the nice, bearded man (see, I told you they are always hairy) behind the desk. It’s the only known copy in the world, I say in not my usual calm way, and it just can’t be missing. He tells me that I am wrong – it can be missing. But, I say, no, it really can’t. Nice man gets the feeling this could go on all day so he tells me to go home and request an official investigation. This happens, and two weeks later the official investigation sends me a lovely email in which, it concludes, the book is not just missing now – it’s officially missing.

Excellent.

So now, dear reader, in a bid to save this discovery from the dustbin, I am launching an appeal to find La Cucina Continentale. If you know of it, or anything about it, I would love to hear from you. You know where to find me. Please, because I really want to be in EndNote…

Not so happy. La Cucina Continentale is now officially missing.

Bibliography:

Cappello, Anthony. “Italian Australians, the Church, War and Fascism in Melbourne 1919-1945.” Masters’ diss.,Victoria University of Technology, 1999.
Cresciani, Gianfranco. Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia, 1922-1945. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980.
First Australian Continental Cookery Book. Melbourne: Cosmopolitan Publishing Co. Limited, 1937.

Tags: 1930s, fascists, first australian continental cookery book, la cucina continentale

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Categories First Australian Continental Cookbook, la cucina continentale, PhD dramas, Uncategorized

Making the sauce, Italian-style

14 Mar

Melbourne, how did you spend Monday’s public holiday? At the Moomba festival, maybe? Hanging out on a beach? Relaxing at a barbecue? How nice for you. I spent it making sauce in nonna’s backyard. Now, if you’ve never made the sauce before, you might imagine a charming scene with tarantella music and handkerchiefs on heads and ethnic types separating tomatoes from their skins as though such an activity filled them with joy and delight.

If you have made the sauce before, you will know that there’s a lot of whinging about which family members haven’t shown up and who isn’t pulling their weight. Your clothes look like you’ve been hanging out with Dexter and your hands sting from too much contact with acidic tomatoes. It’s a non-unionized work place, there are no occupational health and safety requirements and there are no scheduled breaks, mind you there is no shortage of espresso and panettone either. You might be well caffeinated, but it’s still bloody hard work. You have to wash, squash, bottle, seal and cook 300 bottles of sauce. It takes time and it takes effort and there’s no singing, no dancing and no one with a handkerchief on their head, not even my dad.

The good news is you do get paid. Your immediate labour is rewarded with a big plate of ravioli with the new sauce. Your take home pay is a year’s worth of sauce made with Koo-Wee-Rup tomatoes (thanks Zio Giuseppe!) and Spotswood labour. Missing Moomba, which from all accounts is pretty crap anyway, is clearly a small price to pay.

Tags: nonna, passata, Things Italians do, Zio Tony

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Categories Sauce making, Traditions

A fig with my name on it…

13 Mar

Zio Tony is still picking figs in nonna’s backyard. Here’s one he found for me yesterday:

Tags: Figs, traditions, Zio Tony

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Categories Figs, Traditions

Fig picking with Zio Tony

2 Mar

Not a lot excites my Zio Tony. In fact, as far as I can tell, there are only two things. Making money – which he is very good at – and figs – which he picks from my nonna’s backyard tree with the joy of a peasant who’s just won the lottery. Well, the fig lottery anyway.

My job, in all of this, is to hold the ladder steady and put the figs in the bucket. It’s kind of boring, to be honest, and the stupid mosquitoes always treat my legs as an all-you-can-eat buffet, but it does allow me to watch Zio work his way around the fig tree, where I routinely witness a strange but charming transformation. The wheeling, dealing businessman disappears. He is replaced by a giddy farm boy whose level of excitement is directly related to the beauty, and more importantly, ripeness of each fig.

It starts calmly enough.

“Ahh, look at this one Tania, this one’s beautiful,” he says as he passes the fig down to me.

“But this one! This one is even better! You have to eat this one now Tania, eat it now!”

“Ohhh, this one’s just sugar! Look! It’s dripping sugar! Eat it now, it won’t be good later Tania, eat it now.”

The more excited he gets, the less English and the more Sicilian dialect falls from his mouth. It translates to the following, more or less:

“Tania, Tania, Tania this is the best fig ever to grace the earth in the history of the world, eat it now, it can’t wait. EAT! EAT!”

Which can’t be true, because a few seconds later, a fig even better than that one miraculously appears. I eat that too because, if someone tells me to eat, I do. Plus I quite like figs. And saying no to Zio Tony is never a good idea.

Not surprisingly by the end of the 20 minutes I have scarfed down all kinds of figs – from big, fat so-ripe-they’re splitting figs to tiny ones that you can drop into your mouth like a lolly – and now there’s two new big buckets to get through as well…

Not that Zio has come down from the fig tree yet. He is marking out which figs to get next time.

“See this one? It’s yours! On Sunday, it will be perfect! If those bloody birds don’t get there first…”

Tags: Figs, Things Italians do, Zio Tony

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Categories Figs, Traditions

Eating in Hong Kong and Cambodia

4 Feb

So yes, Lamingtons and Lasagna has been missing in action. She went to Hong Kong and Cambodia on holidays, and she wanted to post while she was away but the combination of her innate laziness and the glory of vacationing in a land where the average price of a cocktail is $2.50, meant she never got around to it. She’s back now, but before she can resume with her usual food history-esque babble, and start writing in the first person again, she feels the need to share a few photos. Like this whole cow on a spit:

Yes, that’s right, so it was a skinny cow, but in Siem Reap this outdoor restaurant was a car wash by day and a barbecue joint by night. It served us up two tasty plates of barbecued beef, one rotisserie duck, an assortment of vegetables and condiments, and a litre of the local beer for the princely sum of $8. At that price, Luggage Boy (LB) and myself spent the entire meal contemplating our imminent retirement to Cambodia.

Yumi

29a Street 288, (between Monivong and St 63), Boeung Keng Kang, Phnom Penh

Still in Cambodia, I couldn’t resist this description of a Japanese izakaya run by an English chef in Phnom Penh. So LB and I headed away from the bright lights of the city’s riverside – where most of the tourists can be found – to the small but chilled out Yumi where we enjoyed excellent pumpkin gyoza, finger lickin’ ribs and a deconstructed banoffee pie made with the fantastic local bananas which I am still thinking about. Good doesn’t describe it.

Australian Dairy Company

47 Parkes Street, Kowloon

In Hong Kong now, the Australian Dairy Company in Kowloon has nothing to do with Australia and everything to do with what Hong Kongers like to eat for breakfast. There’s a queue outside and the place is packed with white-shirted men seating and serving at a furious pace. The macaroni soup with industrial ham is really blah but the scrambled eggs are beyond awesome. And while I shouldn’t admit my love of peanut butter and condensed milk on thick slices of over-processed over-white bread, I think I just did. Also, the Hong Kong tea will put hairs on your chest. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Wang Fu & Dumpling Yuan

65 Wellington Street, Central & 69 Wellington Street, Central

There are so many decisions one needs to make in life. Work or Uni? Marriage or singledom? Children or carefree happiness? But, for me, the really important question is: Beijing dumplings or Shanghai dumplings? In Hong Kong, I confronted this dilemma at Wang Fu for Beijing and Dumpling Yuan for Shanghai, conveniently both located on Wellington Street in Central. In conclusion, Shanghai wins – the wrapper is that bit thinner, that bit more delicate, which means you can really taste the superb pork-based fillings. However, the Michelin Guide, which led us to these establishments, is wrong on one count – under no circumstances should you ever eat a mutton dumpling because there’s a reason nearly nobody eats that anymore.

Tim Ho Wan (Mong Kok)

8 Kwong Wa Street, Mong Kok

Speaking of Michelin, like every so-called foodie worth his or her salt, LB and I waited outside Tim Ho Wan – the world’s cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant – for about two hours. The hype around this place is big, so by the time we got in there we were expecting the seventh heaven of dim sum. Not surprisingly, it could not deliver – the food was great, but not amazing, although the Chiu Chow style steamed dumplings were outstanding. I ordered way too much, though all this meant was that we got to eat Michelin-starred barbecued pork buns for breakfast. Not a bad way to start a day at all.

The Peninsula Hong Kong

Salisbury Road, Kowloon

Alright, so it’s touristy and it’s kitschy and properly rich people would never ever do it, but afternoon tea at Hong Kong’s Peninsula is just fun. So I recommend it. Especially the macaroons at the end.

Yung Kee

32-40 Wellington Street, Central

And, on our last night in Hong Kong, the roast goose at Yung Kee. With LB taken down by a stomach bug, it didn’t look like we were going to make it. But, brave soldier boy that he is when it comes to his belly, he rallied and did not regret it. Gamey, fatty and so full of flavour, all stomach bugs were forgotten as we finished our trip on what can only be described as a roast goose high. One of the best things I’ve ever eaten. .. ever. The way all trips should end, really.

Tags: Australian Dairy Company, Cambodia, Dumplings, Dumplings Yuan, Hong Kong, The Peninsula Hong Kong, Tim Ho Wan, Wang Fu, Yumi, Yung Kee

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Categories Cambodia, Holidays, Hong Kong, Uncategorized

Can Mrs Lance Rawson fix my Heston Blumenthal problem?

8 Dec

Yesterday, my copy of Heston Blumenthal at Home arrived in the mail. Study be damned! Deborah Jean Kasnitz’s Work, Gender and Health Among Southern Italian Immigrants in Melbourne wasn’t going anywhere, so, tempted by Heston’s dear face peeking into his fridge on the cover, I decided I could have a quick flick through.

Study or Heston? What would you choose?

Three hours later, after delighting in the Salted butter caramels wrapped in edible cellophane, wondering aloud if the Scallop tartare with white chocolate really worked as a flavour combination, marvelling at the regal purple colour of the Red cabbage gazpacho and wishing I could try a big scoop of that famous Bacon and egg ice cream, I had a problem.

I needed a sous vide machine, a vacuum packer, a cream whipper and a pressure cooker. And a digital probe. And maybe a refractometer too. And I needed them now. You wouldn’t send an astronaut into space without the right equipment, so how could I be expected to go boldly into the new world of scientific kitchen exploration without them? Answer: I couldn’t.

Ok, so it’s a very first world problem, but what’s a true Heston fan to do? Especially when that Heston fan is a poor PhD student? I tell you despair nearly drove me back to Work, Gender and Health Among Southern Italian Immigrants in Melbourne but, just in time, I remembered the rather prolific Mrs Lance Rawson, who wrote the 1895 classic, The Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion. Mrs Rawson has advice for when you’re a woman and you just need something new, like a bonnet, for example:

The husband is a creature of appetite, believe me, and not to be approached upon any important matter, such as a new bonnet or a silk dress, on an empty stomach.

This is good news. Against all the odds, I actually have a husband! So if I want a water bath, all I have to do is feed him well?

Yes, says Mrs Rawson:

Man must be cooked for. He’ll do without shirt-buttons, and he’ll do without his slippers, but he will not do without his dinner, nor is he inclined to accept excuses as regards under- or over-done meals after the first week or so of the honeymoon. If there be any young girls reading these pages who are contemplating marriage in the near future, take an old wife’s advice and learn to cook, for only by feeding him well will you succeed in gaining your husband’s respect and keeping his affection.

Well, I can cook, but oh no! It might be too late:

Let me suggest to prospective brides that they should stipulate for a stove if marrying a Bushman. A man will promise anything before marriage, very little after.

Damn it, have I missed the boat? Should I have vowed “I promise to love and obey but only if you get me everything listed under Specialist kit on pages 389 to 393 of Heston Blumenthal at Home.“? I can’t believe I went with traditional vows! So stupid of me…

Or, here’s a novel idea, maybe I could work and earn my own money to buy a sous vide machine?

Nah, Mrs Rawson wouldn’t approve, and I just couldn’t let her down.