On air on Bayfm 99.9 community radio on July 2, 2012
Well maybe not the hair…or the skin. Though I read that buffalo hide is a popular ingredient in Bhutan. Here on the North Coast of NSW we feed our minds each year with a large serve of writers, at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. And each month Miss Alison Drover feeds our bellies with in season deliciousness. For July she is thinking about eating a whole cow, particularly the tail, a.k.a. oxtail, more versatile than I ever realised. And yes you can vegetarianise the recipes. Mooo. (That’s ‘good’ in cow)
Today on belly, Jonathan Parsons, director of the2012 Byron Bay writers festival, talked about the authors who have written on food & will be on panels at the festival, no traditional cookbook writers but some very interesting takes on the world of food, Gay Bilson is teaching a workshop, & there will be a few dinners seasoned with great writers. In the second half of belly, miss July warmed us up with in season deliciousness, & we met a 9 year old food blogger who is now up to about 7 million visits on her site.
WHO IS COMING TO THE 2012 BYRON BAY WRITERS FESTIVAL
(Excerpts from the Festival website, full details here)
Charlotte Wood has been described as “one of the most intelligent and compassionate novelists in Australia” (The Age), and “one of our finest and most chamaleonic writers” (The Australian). Her latest work is a book of contemplations on cooking, Love & Hunger: Thoughts on the Gift of Food.
Wayne Macauley is a highly acclaimed writer…His most recent novel, The Cook (Text, 2011), has been nominated a Pick of The Week (The Age & Sydney Morning Herald), Review of the Week (Sunday Age), Must Read (Sunday Herald Sun) and Book of the Week (Brisbane Sunday Mail), receiving many four and five star reviews. It has been listed as ‘Favourite Australian Fiction’ on ABC Radio National, a ‘Book of the Year’ in the Weekend Australian, ‘Best Fiction of 2011’ at Readings Bookshop and ‘Best of This Year’s Releases’ in the Sunday Herald Sun.
Mungo MacCallum has established himself as one of Australia’s most influential and entertaining political journalists, broadcasters and commentators. He is the author of eight books on politics. His latest book is Eat My Words, which will launched at this year’s Festival on Friday 3 August at 4pm. [ “Because every other bugger is doing it”.]
Jim Hearn is a researcher, writer and chef. As a chef, Jim has worked in commercial kitchens for over twenty years. Jim wrote High Season: a memoir of Heroin and Hospitality, after he quit his job as head chef at Rae’s on Watego’s in Byron Bay and enrolled in the writing program at Southern Cross University as a mature-age student. Louise Thurtell picked up the manuscript for High Season through Allen & Unwin’s Friday pitch session.
The wonderful Gay Bilson will present a workshop on food writing, called “What we talk about when we talk about food. Details here.
And there are three literary food events, details here. Jonathan says he loves those sorts of events at festivals because that is where the best conversations happen.
Also check out Charlotte Wood’s blog, “How to shuck an oyster”, all sorts of meditations and investigations of the world of food. I was an instant fan. There will be a permanent link from the belly site, but for now see here.
MARVELLOUS MARTHA
Have you heard about a 9 year old Scottish girl called Martha Payne? This year she started a blog to talk about the lunches provided by her school. Some days she loved them, but often she came home hungry. Some days the meals were too small, or just not good, which is why the blog is called Never Seconds. For example, she says the kids were not allowed fruit unless they had finished everything else on the tray. It quickly became a sensation, with kids sending pictures from schools all over the world, and Martha started to raise a lot of money for school lunches in a poor community in Africa through the blog. Soon the local council, in charge of providing the food to schools, dragged Martha from maths class and told her she could no longer take photos of her lunch. This caused such a swell of support and protest that the Argyll and Bute council reversed its ban and the blog now is up to about 7 million visits. As most artists know, getting banned is great publicity. But it’s an impressive effort if you are only 9 years old. If you or your kids are bored during the holidays, maybe a little writing project is the answer. Martha is also on holidays, and has asked schools from around the world to be guest bloggers on Never Seconds. But even if nobody you know will ever darken the doorstep of a school again, those lunch tray pictures from around the world are very interesting, a window into other places. Putting food into our own mouths and bodies is an intimate, important and literally visceral thing. The food consumed by primary school kids feels like something that is building the people of our future, as much as everything they learn in class.
The Byron Bay Community Centre is also running a whole heap of classes for kids during these school holidays, including cooking classes with Ali, aka our wonderful seasonal bellysister Alison Drover. It is called Kid Around.
NOSE TO TAIL EATING – BY MISS JULY, ALISON DROVER
On Belly today we discussed the idea of eating everything from “nose to tail” which simply put means considering that when we eat we should not be looking at wasting a life just for some choice eye fillet steaks. Imagine a cow that just was made of eye fillet steaks! There are other parts of the animal that are food for us and also contain varying nutritional benefits i.e. livers, marrow in bones of the oxtail and so worth and by discovering what these parts are and how to cook them we are ensuring that when an animal is killed is has fed as many people as possible and very little has been wasted.
Consider the other types of the animal in winter and chat to your butcher or farmer about stocking some of these cuts and making them more available. If you and a group of your friends shops at the butcher share recipes ideas so that it makes it worthwhile for the butcher to keep these cuts i.e. more customers and in turn you will be helping the planet too.
Oxtail is the tail of the cow… amazing meat cooked slowly and one of the best bones for stock. Enjoy…
Reading – perhaps after you you have eaten http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/food_and_drink/1299412/nose_to_tail_eating_its_sustainable_but_can_you_stomach_this_type_of_meat.html
JULY BEST IN SEASON
beautiful ugly lemons - photo Alison Drover
Soup making time so that you can snuggle up earlier at night.
FRUIT
Bananas, Carambola, Chestnuts, Custard apples, Fuji apples, Grapefruit, Kiwifruit
Lemons, Limes, Mandarins, Nashi, Navel oranges, Packham pears, Panama passionfruit
Pears, Persimmons, Pink lady apples, Quinces,
Red delicious apples, Rhubarb, Ruby red grapefruit
VEGETABLES
Baby fennel, Baby red capsicums, Beetroot, Broccoli, Brown onions, Brussels sprouts
Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celeriac, Celery, Chinese greens
Dutch carrots, English spinach, Fennel, Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
Garlic, Ginger, Jerusalem artichokes, Kumara or sweet potatoes, Leeks
Parsnips, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Rosemary, Sage, Silverbeet, Spinach, Witlof
A tale of winter – Miss July’s Oxtail Warmer
Miss July, blue with cold but fearlessly collecting ingredients
Enough for 2 but make more for the freezer
an oxtail - cut into joints
flour - a little for dusting the oxtail
cayenne pepper
ground black pepper
salt
butter - thick slice
carrots 3, peeled and roughly chopped
1 fennel chopped roughly (optional)
onions - about 2, peeled and roughly chopped
celery - a rib or two, chopped
seasonings - garlic and bay leaves (4 or 5), plus one or two from: orange peel, juniper berries, thyme
tin of chopped tomatoes local please or if in season fresh tomtaoes
a bottle of strong red wine (like an Aussie shiraz)
-Preheat oven to 160C. Trim the meat of fat and toss each joint into flour that you have seasoned with the cayenne, mustard powder and ground black pepper.
-Melt the butter in a roasting tin and seal the meat. Turn each piece as it colours, then add the carrots, onions, celery and some chopped garlic and let them colour a little, in the rapidly disappearing butter.
-Add the bay leaves, then pour over the wine and tinned tomatoes, and add in any extra seasonings - a few strips of orange peel, 8 or 10 juniper berries, or a few sprigs of thyme.
-Bring to the boil, cover with oiled greaseproof paper and place in the oven for an hour. After an hour the meat will be brown; then turn the meat over and leave for a further hour. The sauce will have reduced and become intensely flavoured; there will not be a great deal of it, especially if you haven’t added the tinned tomatoes, but it will be strong and sticky. With the tomatoes, there will be more sauce with less intensity of flavour, but also extremely tasty.
-Serve with mashed potato, crushed tinned cannellini beans, or mashed root vegetables.
Miss July has some free cooking classes coming up, all ages these ones, through the Byron Community College and the
Love Food Hate Waste campaign, details here.
by Alison Drover.
BELLY BULLETIN
– In Byron Bay, the YAC this Thursday July 5 is having a fundraiser with non-alcoholic gluhwein & other goodies, music,performances. It goes to support their work with young people, starts at 5.30 pm. There’s also a 1 day barista course for young people on July 17.
In Sydney, Michael Pollan, author of “The omnivore’s dilemma” & “in defence of food” , will be speaking at the Opera House on July 10. He is one of the people changing the way we think about food through his journalism. Someone please get him to this area. Info here
& in Coorabell, at the hall, Argentinian chef Francisco Smoje will be hosting 3 pop up dinners, starting Sunday July 15. What’s a pop up dinner and who is Francisco? Tune in to belly on the 23rd of July to find out. Or check out his site.
MUSIC
I wrote a novel, by The trouble with Templeton (his name is Thomas Calder, he’s from Brisbane, and who was Templeton? The bellysisters don’t know)
Manana, by Bustamento, Nicky Bomba’s new band (that’s the day some of us will finally start to write a novel)
The Never Seconds Song, by the totally fabulous Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets, they wear kilts, they beat up the daleks, check em out on YouTube
Motion, by Hinterlandt, another fab solo Australian artist, to finish belly for another week.
Love and chocolate covered novelists, Sister T