Cooking June

Punch drunk

This month’s Cooking Your Calendar Challenge was the old favourite Shepherd’s Pie. We took ourselves over to Erskineville to the beautiful home of artist couple Cherine Fahd and Todd Robinson for a wintery feast of this simple but satisfying classic dish.

Daniel, Cherine and the kids catch up

There are really two steps to making Shepherd's Pie. The first step is preparing and cooking it. The second, somewhat more challenging part, is sexing it up. After it all, it’s a homely looking dish. Not much to look at. You’ve got your beef and you’ve got your potatoes and... well, it's sloppy. It’s a meal that has relinquished the glory associated with refined culinary style, to fulfil its civic duty as an economical, functional and tasty belly-filler. The Shepherd’s Pie has no airs and graces. It doesn’t even bother with the discretion of a pastry shell, preferring to bare all. It’s meaty bits plopped onto the plate in a proud display of delicious vulgarity. Making this look good could be tricky.

If looks could kill

Drew was Chef this time and from the outset he wanted to jazz up the common approach to the pie. Forgoing the recipe’s use of the traditional beef mince, he decided to whip out the crock-pot for a slow-cooked variation, using diced lean beef with vegetables and red wine. The beef cooked all day at his apartment and the delicious aroma soon hinted that the flavour was going to compensate for any aesthetic shortfall. Perhaps blindfolding our guests during dinner was looking to be an option?

Bring on the Winter carbs!

When we arrived in Erskineville with crock-pot in hand, Drew and Rachel immediately took to the kitchen. Rachel shelled fresh peas and Drew worked on the mashed potato that would crown the beef filling. Meanwhile Cherine and Todd’s gorgeous 2 year-old daughter Rei entertained us with a contemporary and very conceptual ballet performance. A couple of bottles of De Bortoli’s Petit Verdot were cracked open as we all relished the impending sleep-in that this long weekend would provide (World Cup 4.30am wake-up call notwithstanding).

Rei puts her best food forward

Twenty minutes in the oven and the pie came out looking pretty good. Let’s face it, this is a hard meal to stuff up too drastically. The slow cooking had tenderised the meat perfectly and the creamy mash had browned to create a crisp lid of carbs. Served simply with steamed green beans and crusty bread, this was definitely a recession-buster meal.

Todd begins the autopsy

So ultimately what the pie lacked in the looks department it made up for in taste. It ended up being the perfect meal for a cold winter's night and Petit Verdot was giving us all a rosy glow. But then Todd surprised us all with his killer "deconstructed" baklava-style dessert of oven baked filo pastry layered with sugar and honey topped with a praline crumble, and served with ice cream. Absolutely amazing. We're definitely putting his recipe on the blog as soon as we get it, so stay tuned.

Dinner is served

All in all, the Shepherd's Pie, De Bortoli Petit Verdot and Todd's dessert was a complete winner of a meal. Just a pity we can't say the same thing about the Socceroos. Good thing we ended up sleeping right through the game.

Thanks to Todd and Cherine for hosting!

Announcing June

Cherine Fahd

Day 8 from Hiding: Self Portraits, 2009-10

Courtesy of the artist

Are we sad about summer coming to an end? Of course we are. Are we happy about coming into June? Absolutely! We might be whinging about the colder weather but June gives us an excuse to:

a) see as many films as humanly possible at the Sydney Film Festival
b) wear Ugg boots outside the house with impunity
c) cozy-up indoors and cook delicious comfort food
d) drink plenty of red wine

Certainly on Sunday 13th June we will be practicing (c) and (d) with great gusto. The calendar's recipe this month is that old family favourite, Shepherd's Pie served with De Bortoli Deen Vat Series Petit Verdot. Once again we are venturing westward to join the very talented artist couple, Cherine Fahd and Todd Robinson with their two children, at their home in Erskineville. If you were gallery hopping in Sydney in January you would have encountered Cherine's wonderful photo series at MOP Projects, where she presented 100 self-portraits of herself "hiding" her face, shot over 100 days. On day 28, her second child was born making the series a poignant record of domestic life.

Once again Drew and Rachel will be joining forces in the kitchen to cook. Daniel is not sure how he will contribute but he did once curate a survey exhibition of Cherine's work, so perhaps he will spontaneously curate their house on the night. Maybe he will take on the all-important job of opening the wine. It's anyone's guess and we'll find out on the 13th. See you then!

Remembering May

May's recipe was such a hit with our fans that we were compelled to cook it again. And as we did, we had to acknowledge the passing of rabbits gone before. Bon appetite. Cue tissues.

Cooking May

Photo: Anne Zahalka

If you are vegetarian, own a pet rabbit or loved Watership Down, please don’t read this month’s entry of our blog because last night we sharpened up our incisors and feasted on two of your beloved bunny friends. And boy, were they good! In fact, after cooking up May’s recipe Coniglio al Vino Rosse (Rabbit in Red Wine) we’ve come up with the solution to Australia’s rabbit plague. Forget calicivirus. Let’s just get rabbits on the menu, in the oven and on the barbeque. Delicious, especially shared with friends on a chilly autumn evening over a bottle of De Bortoli Melba Reserve. But perhaps we should go back to the beginning.

Last night we descended on the beautiful Australia Street Guesthouse owned by our hosts, acclaimed photo artist Anne Zahalka, her TV producer husband Ian Collie and daughter Alice. Drew and Rachel were in the kitchen together, each slightly daunted because neither had cooked rabbit before. Thankfully the process was not at all like the rabbit boiling scene in Fatal Attraction. Far from it. With Drew taking the reigns as Head Chef and Rachel taking the supporting role of Sous Chef, things went surprisingly well. After frying bacon, onion and garlic, then browning the pieces of rabbit, Drew deglazed the pan and left the bunnies simmering in red wine and herbs for an hour. Meanwhile Rachel busily prepared side dishes of baked carrots, green beans and polenta. Daniel poured some wine and watched.

Photo: Anne Zahalka

With dinner underway, we had the opportunity to get a bit sauced up too with our hosts. And there certainly was a lot to talk about, from Anne’s latest exhibition HOMEGROUND!, to Ian’s new television series Rake and of course the Biennale of Sydney that just opened last week. Amidst all of this, the very talented young Alice performed a haunting piano piece she had composed herself, then an interpretive dance of a Greek myth. Clearly talent runs in the family. Soon dinner was ready and it was time for us to pull our rabbit out of the hat, so to speak. And we think we did that with aplomb. Drew’s dish was rich, succulent and had everyone asking for more. Rachel’s polenta ,which alarmingly resembled ectoplasm, was rather less popular. But hey, you can’t win them all…

Photo: Anne Zahalka

After dinner, we were joined by two of Anne and Ian's American relatives, Lauren and Nate, who were staying in their popular in-house Bed and Breakfast. And that’s when the wigs came out. How did we end up here? Not your typical Sunday night dinner but then we weren’t dining with a typical family. In the spirit of Anne’s art practice, we’ll let the photos, taken mostly this time by a famous guest photographer, tell the whole story.





Don't forget to check out Anne's fantastic show HOMEGROUND! and join her for an artist walk and talk on 22 May at 3pm at the Zanzi Bar and ending at the Union Hotel at 4pm in Newtown. That will sure be a pub crawl to remember.

Announcing May

ANNE ZAHALKA

from the series HOMEGROUND 2010

Courtesy the artist & Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

So, wow, May has hit us already - and it hit us in a big way since we are all busy juggling one art opening after the other, as well as running this way and that to a silly number of dinners, engagement parties and other do's. Oh, and there’s also that thing known as “paid employment” that gets in the way of our social life. Amongst all of the madness, we are extremely excited about our next De Bortoli dinner on Sunday May 16th. And that’s because this month our guests are the amazingly talented and renowned photographic artist, Anne Zahalka and her equally talented film and television producer husband Ian Collie, together with two of their glamorous friends. For a change of scene, Anne and Ian have kindly offered to host our dinner party at their bed & breakfast in Newtown called Australia Street Guesthouse. Anne tells us she is a big lover of rabbit, so she is very enthusiastic about this month’s recipe Coniglio al Vino Rosse (Rabbit in Red Wine) which Drew and Rachel will be cooking together. In fact, we are turning this month’s dinner into a bit of a special occasion for Anne to celebrate her latest exhibition HOMEGROUND that is being held in a number of different Newtown pubs throughout May. Drew and Daniel even appear in one of Anne's photos set at Newtown pub Zanzi Bar (pictured above). On top of all that, this month's dinner is also an opportunity for Daniel to celebrate his curatorship of a major exhibition of the work of the late Australian artist Arthur McIntyre (1945-2003) at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre and Macquarie University Art Gallery. With these achievements there will certainly be toasts all round with the De Bortoli Melba Reserve. See you on the 16th!

Cooking April

Master chef Rachel is on soup detail

This month's Cooking Your Calendar event took us to Sydney's Inner West where our excellent hostess was artist and curator Holly Williams. April's recipe was Leanne De Bortoli's hearty Zucchini and Potato Soup matched with Windy Peak Sauvignon Blanc Semillon.

Despite the simplicity of the recipe Rachel was nervous being head chef this month, but Holly's well-equipped kitchen made for smooth sailing. As the sun set over Sydney, Rachel took over Holly's kitchen like a tornado - chopping, mashing and blending like a woman possessed. Ever helpful (read control freak) Drew couldn't resist hovering around the sidelines offering constructive criticism and generally being a pest.

Drinking on the job as usual

By the time our guests all arrived, the soup was ready which was the go-ahead for everyone to enjoy a round of pre-dinner drinks. Our guests included Holly of course, as well as children's book author Tristan Bancks and artists Aseem Pereira and Cash Brown. Holly's cat Mr Smoochy was the night's official mascot. As we all got to know one another, Aseem asked Daniel what role he plays in the Cooking Your Calendar project, to which Daniel replied "I stand around and drink wine". Daniel was certainly in good company with Cash, who needed the hair of the dog to get over her Friday night debauchery.

Kids in the Kitchen

Before long Rachel rang the dinner bell, serving the soup with a salad of greens and baked vegetables, and hunks of crusty sourdough. Everyone agreed the soup was superb - rich, flavoursome and warming. Definitely a recipe to keep on file.

Friends from way back, Tristan, Drew and Rachel rehashed old times while the beautiful bawdy Cash Brown discussed a range of topics not suitable for publication. Holly, Aseem and Daniel caught up on artworld gossip. A contentious debate flared up about the Archibald Prize and Sam Leach's controversial win for an "appropriation" of an old Dutch masterpiece. Tristan defended the Archibald to Daniel's unmitigated horror. Drew was appalled that anybody would pay good money to see a gargantuan portrait of Glenn A Baker. Speaking of art, Cash plugged her upcoming exhibition at Robin Gibson Gallery; if last year's Cash Brown art controversy is anything to go by, it should be a great show. We also chatted about the upcoming Sydney Writers Festival where Tristan will be one of the guest speakers.

Cash Brown - the Queen of Controversy

Ten or so bottles of wine later, Holly suggested we play a boozy game of Balderdash, where players bluff each other with bogus definitions of various words or things. Rachel blitzed the game but suspected that Holly was scoring under the influence. After we gorged ourselves on a cheese platter, we made our way back to Kings Cross - not that we remember much of the ride home.

Mr Smoochy - designated driver

At Home with the De Bortoli's

Drew and Daniel meet Leanne and Steve

Against the backdrop of the Easter long weekend, Daniel and Drew hit the road for a Cooking Your Calendar excursion to the De Bortoli winery and family home in Melbourne’s Yarra Valley. After spending some time at the Cellar Door and cheese tasting station, we made our way to meet Leanne De Bortoli and husband Steve Webber at their home on the grounds. We instantly hit it off, knocking back white wine on their gorgeous back deck, which overlooks Leanne’s organic veggie patch. Steve (in hoon-style Grand Prix mode) later took us on a hair-raising ride around the vineyard on his Moke. Drew fed their three big pigs a bucket of acorns while Leanne explained how the oinkers had a date with a smoke house and a salami knife come June. By sunset we met Leanne’s brother Kevin and wife Jennifer (who penned two of the calendar’s recipes) along with a bunch of their friends from the region. All up it was a great night of food, music, conversation and of course wine. Leanne and Steve’s hospitality was awesome!

We’ll let the pictures do the talking...

The vineyard after vintage

Daniel wondering where the bottles are

Drew and the Moke

Pigs before

Pigs after

Dining with the De Bortoli's

Jennifer and Leanne De Bortoli with the calendar

Steve shows us around the next day... Is that contemporary sculpture or what?

Barrels of love

Announcing April

Rachel caught shopping for soup "supplies" at the Woolies Soup Shelf

This month we have an extra thing to announce. Drew and Daniel are excited to be visiting the De Bortoli family for dinner at the Yarra Valley in Victoria on Easter Monday (4 April). They will report back next week after their wine country encounter with the De Bortoli dynasty.

This April for Cooking your Calendar we are all taking our pots and pans on the road again to our friend, Holly Williams's place in Annandale. Even though Eastern Suburbs dwellers are notorious for refusing to leave their hood, we love the Inner West and are really looking forward to taking over Holly's kitchen.

We have upped the numbers again this month, inviting five guests to Holly's pad for a cosy autumn night of soup and shenanigans. Two of our guests, children's book author Tristan Bancks and partner creative director Amber Melody-Bancks, are old school friends of Drew's and Rachel's who have just moved down to Balmain from Bangalow in northern NSW. Luckily the recipe is vegetarian because, like most hippies from the Byron Bay region, Tristan and Amber are both vego. Then, of course, there is our fun hostess Holly and her plus-one. Holly is an artist and works at UTS as Assistant Curator. Last but certainly not least, is Cash Brown, artist and curator of Artereal Gallery in Rozelle.

Rachel is in the kitchen on her own this time, but the recipe Zucchini and Potato Soup is a straightforward one, so she is feeling pretty confident. So long as she doesn't get stuck into De Bortoli's Windy Peak before dinner, then things should be fine. Lock in the date: Saturday 17 April...

Today's Good Living article proves that we're onto something!

Now Here's a Recipe - Media Tarts

Well, it's good to know that we're not the only people that think our project is cool. Today the Good Living section of the Sydney Morning Herald featured an article on our Cooking Your Calendar project which is worth a look if you can get your hands on a copy. Drew's twin-brother, a longtime chef, read the article and promptly sent Drew a text, joking "I have been chef for 16 years and never got reviewed in the Herald... Stuff the lot of ya!!" That's brotherly support for you. Maybe we can make amends by inviting him to the May 2010 De Bortoli dinner when Drew is in the kitchen with Rachel?

Hmm, being judged by a chef. Now that could be interesting...

Cooking March

Look up dumplings in a cookbook and it probably describes them as small balls of bread, egg, and meat; and broth as water, stock and chopped vegies. So the task seemed simple enough. Pete was expecting to knock March's recipe, Canederli Di Pancetta in Brodo (Dumplings in Soup), over single-handedly and in no time at all. Well you know what they say about best-laid plans. Before too long he had Rachel and Drew furiously hand shredding sourdough, chopping herbs and overseeing the delicate alchemy of broth making. Daniel assisted by having a lie down.

We had envisioned this month’s De Bortoli dinner to be a cakewalk; small meal, small guest list, but it was fast becoming a precision operation. Pete was sweating over his broth, testing the prototype dumplings to see if they really would float to the top when cooked, just like Emeri De Bortoli says in her recipe. The issue of using pancetta in the dumplings and chicken stock in the broth when catering for a vegetarian was cause for minor debate. To improvise, we made a vegetarian option with sun-dried tomato and basil. But we were now faced with both a culinary and ethical dilemma; could both dumpling types be cooked simultaneously in the same broth? What would happen if a rogue pancetta chunk hitched a ride on a vego dumpling during their little swim in the broth? Some of life’s questions are just too big for a Saturday afternoon.

We had to then carry the large pot of scalding broth through the streets of Kings Cross, to Rachel’s place nearby. An afternoon rainstorm had provided a dangerously greasy path underfoot and negotiating the four flights of stairs up to Rachel’s door was a potential OH&S apocalypse. Visions of months in an intensive care burns unit were eventually allayed as we set about tackling the evening’s simplest of tasks once our guests Katie Dyer and Daniel Joyce had arrived: cracking open a bottle of Windy Peak Sparkling Pinot Noir Chardonnay.

We sat around for an hour or so, while Pete tinkered away in the kitchen, preparing the dumplings and a few simple side dishes of bocconcini salad and cooked asparagus and baby carrots, to be served with the recommended De Bortoli Gulf Station Pinot Grigio. We all surmised that the dumplings may not have been filling on their own. How wrong we were! Small parcels of big fun, a few dumplings later and we were all bursting at the seams.

After dinner, Rachel attempted a rather lame game of film-themed Charades. Drew humoured her for about five minutes because it was an opportunity to pay homage to eighties teen star Corey Haim, who overdosed a few days ago, and not on dumplings. You can just imagine how The Lost Boys was acted out. Later Rachel was more successful at group participation when she turned on Fleetwood Mac's greatest hits CD and turned her lounge room into a makeshift dancefloor. Daniel went off to the kitchen to sneak a few more cold dumplings, while Pete explained to Katie and the other Daniel how without seeing Fleetwood Mac at the Hunter Valley last December we wouldn't have dreamed up Cooking your Calendar. Pop culture references kept being amplified throughout the evening as everyone got more and more tipsy while outdoing one another with 'broth' puns. Among them were David Lee Broth, Philip Seymour Brothman, Broth Whitlam, and The Brothman Prophesies. Rachel even suggested Broth as the new name for the eighties pop group Bros. But the hands-down winner and perhaps a new name for our project, should we need a more glamorous stage name: New Kids on the Broth.

Announcing March

What image to use this time?

Type Dumplings into Google Images ... and presto!

Difficult to believe that it's March already, but all of a sudden we are planning our third De Bortoli dinner with Pete in the kitchen once again. The recipe this month is Canederli Di Pancetta in Brodo (or Dumplings in Soup which is a lot easier to pronounce...) Sensibly we are holding our March dinner party on a Saturday night this time which means we won't have to front up to work, half asleep the following morning. No more Sunday nights for us, if we can help it! So, the date is set for Saturday 13th March and the venue is Rachel's apartment. Thankfully Rachel has finally had an electrician over to fix the lights in her kitchen and loungeroom, otherwise things would have been really interesting. While we all support Earth Hour and love candlelit dinners, cooking by candlelight for two years is frankly stupid, Rachel. So, thanks go out to sparkies everywhere for making this month possible.

For a change, we have decided to host a smaller, more intimate dinner party inviting Katie Dyer who is Curator and Gallery Manager at the National Art School Gallery and Daniel Joyce who is a Lecturer in International Human Rights Law at the University of New South Wales. As well as her regular gig at the National Art School Gallery, Katie is also curating Primavera this year at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art so she is really going to be earbashed by us wanting to know all about how it is coming along. As Katie is vegetarian Pete will be preparing special vegetarian dumplings for her. But for us carnivores, the pancetta stays. And what a relief for Daniel - all he needs to do again is pick the music and pour the wine! Roll on Saturday 13th March...

Cooking February

Ahhh, love

On Sunday night we hosted our second De Bortoli cook-in with Daniel taking the reigns as 'Chef' on that special once-a-year night for lovers and florists (not to mention all rampant Capitalists) everywhere, Valentine’s Day. On the subject of love, while Daniel is a great lover of eating, he's never been fussed on cooking. In fact, this was the first time he had cooked for a group of people in years. Even though Spaghetti Puttanesca is a simple dish, Daniel was having night terrors at the thought of having to cook for so many people. Such pressure.

Daniel shows how good he is at cooking

Pasta really is a 'more the merrier' sort of food, perfect for extended Italian families or, in our case, the extended so-called 'urban family' of good mates. And by Sunday night our group of guests had grown. The two artists and founding directors of artist-run gallery MOP Projects, Ron Adams and George Adams were also joining us for dinner, as well as another friend Phoebe Arcus. Daniel had prepared the spaghetti sauce the day before, so that the flavours of the tomatoes, anchovies, olives and herbs could deepen and develop overnight. (Really though, he cooked the day before so no one could watch him stumbling around a kitchen that increasingly resembled a car accident!)

Drew the kitchen control freak can't help but stir the pot

Friend and dinner guest, Elizabeth Stanton had offered to let us host our dinner party at her beautiful Potts Point apartment. On Elizabeth’s veranda, overlooking Fitzroy Gardens and King Cross’ famous El Alamein fountain, we toasted our second Cooking Your Calendar dinner party while torrential rain fell in sheets outside.

Proud Italian Elizabeth take over the spaghetti

By the time dinner was served, everyone was getting along famously. And it was a culinary success for Daniel because the meal was an unqualified homey hit. A delightfully messy affair of ropey spaghetti in the rich puttanesca sauce, Daniel topped the pasta with bitey Parmesan cheese. Elizabeth made a simple rocket salad and Daniel showed how good he is with a knife by cutting a crusty bread stick. (Though secretly he hadn't cut bread ever since sliced bread was invented so on the inside he was sweating bullets). The fruity flavour of De Bortoli’s Windy Peak Classic White was a perfect accompaniment to the meal. However, Ron and George broke the rules by following the white with a bottle of red they'd brought themselves - apparently white wine en masse doesn't agree with their tender constitutions.

Triumph

Over dinner we shared some hilarious stories about the 'dark' side of Valentine’s Day - perfect considering we were eating a spaghetti dish named after prostitution (a fairly unromanticised career path). These included tales of anonymous flowers sent to James by a suspicious ex-girlfriend trying to entrap him, as well as frightening love letters written to Rachel by a mentally unstable stalker to which she replied by filing a police report. On a more pleasant note, Elizabeth recounted a 'bodice-ripper' moment she’d had in Venice last year where she had been swept off her feet by a Venetian motorbike-riding maitre d'.

Cheers

Daniel had prepared an iPod playlist the day before, showing he's easily distracted by more curatorial activities than cooking. Basically he searched 'love' into his iTunes library and came up with songs like 'Computer Love' by Kraftwerk, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Joy Division and 'Love is a Stranger' by the Eurythmics. Perfect ironic sentiments for Valentine's Day, he reasoned.

Sauced

The empty bottles were piling up by now and everyone was well and truly 'sauced'. Elizabeth had promised to supply dessert - which turned out to be a simple no fuss dish of store bought chocolate. Needless to say, desserts is 'stressed' spelled backwards so hats off to Elizabeth for being such a clever, gorgeous, stress free co-host.

See you in March lovers!