A new bellysister joined Sister Tess for this belly show, the lovely Sister Robert.  Sister Rob came to Byron from Sydney for the 2010 Byron Writers Festival.  He went to several foodie events at the Festival, including a workshop by Vietnamese Australian chef Luke Nguyen and local writer Victoria Cosford’s launch of her first book, “Amore and Amaretti”.  As well as several non-food related events, just for balance.  Sisters T and R agree that the foodies were by far the most charming and best behaved people at the Writers Festival.  Victoria’s launch was packed and very lively, there were tears, wine and delicious food, and a heartfelt introduction by Joanna Savill. Joanna and Victoria studied Italian together in Canberra, and Joanna  first invited Victoria to join her in Bologna (and then tried unsuccessfully to stop Victoria from smiling back at the hordes of men who followed her around).  Victoria read delicious extracts from her book, we played a snippet from her visit to Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence.  The audience was in pain, you could hear the sighs.  Luke Nguyen is a very charming man.  One chairperson’s researcher summed him up as “cook, Vietnam, good guy”.

In contrast, Brett Eason Ellis decided to be a very naughty boy at his first ever writers festival.  Ramona Koval from the ABC reminded us that she has 3 grandkids and she doesn’t believe in letting naughty boys play too many silly games.  It sounds like he was just after the Australian holiday.  And Gretel Pinniger aka Madam Lash made photographers happy by pretending to burn her biography, and looking ready to eat her biographer – not in a good way.  And various panellists were talking as usual about climate change, population and other environmental concerns, sounding desperate enough in the leadup to this Australian federal election to incite revolution. Or “a social tipping point”.  Or at least a vote for the Greens, or anyone game enough to whisper that we need to change from a growth model to a steady state one.  Look it up, to some of us belly sisters it sounds like the last chance to stop the veggie patch from going underwater.  Meantime, the sun shone on the whole festival and it was easy to revel in the beauty of the North Beach site and all the wonderful brain food.  There were even a few more panellists discussing their topics rather than just plugging their books, or we were just lucky to pick panels with good chairpeople.
Meantime, back in the kitchen, Luke’s cooking workshop was very interesting and hands on. It was great to find out that we can get most of the ingredients for Vietnamese food locally.  And who knew that soft shell crab is available frozen at the fish shop?  A few good tips :

Use a dusting of potato starch for deep frying for a light crunchy texture
Use a chopstick to check oil temperature (lots of bubbles=hot)
Less is more – food will keep cooking after you take it out
Buy the best, light, first press fish sauce you can find
Rice paper rolls – don’t leave them in water to soften, just a quick dip is enough
Don’t overfill
And – lots of herbs is barely enough!

Sister Rob did our first ever cookbook review, of Luke’s “The songs of Sapa”, even after hearing local writer Alan Close take to task reviewer Rosemarie Sorensen for a negative review 19 years ago!  Rob says he sometimes forgets to actually read recipe books rather than just focus on the recipes,
·    Luke’s book also offers insights into Vietnamese culture e.g his father’s story from fighting in the war.
·    The recipes are good although some ingredients may be hard to find.

Some of Luke Nguyen’s recipes are online, see here

Sister Tess did an interview with Luke and his partner/photographer, Susanna Boyd, and recorded several sessions of the festival, so listen up to belly for more – and remember our major subscriber drive/radiothon is starting, subscribe online here.  Most of us bring you great radio for free, but the gear and rent have to be paid, so please help if you can.  You can even nominate your favourite show (hint?)

Sister Rob was lucky enough to have a mother who was a skilful and enthusiastic cook.  He was asked to bring his favourite cookbook on belly, and he turned up with a very well used (trashed!)
scrapbook of recipes, the oldest were handwritten 70s gems from his mum (aww).  Like many of us, Sisters T and R both discovered that not everybody knows what good food tastes like, let alone how it is made, when they had…..(horror music)…. flatmates!   A chance to share war stories : Rob’s most memorable was hearing a squeak, opening the crumb tray under the toaster and finding a dead mouse.  Sister T’s was the special occasion roast chook a flatmete splurged on – but she didn’t know that you take the chicken out of the plastic bag before you put it in the oven.  We’d love to share your best stories on air if you comment on this post, or email us
belly@belly.net.au

Rob also made the best ever pickled olives – yes starting from raw olives – get in touch if you know where to get some in the Northern Rivers.

SISTER ROBERT’S HOME PICKLED OLIVES

On a recent visit to sister R, sister T had the pleasure of tasting the best home pickled olives ever.  Sister R has helped friends harvest olives both out in the country and in central Sydney, of all places, so he’s learned how to get them from bitter little fruits to delicious, long lasting snacks.  This is a traditional home skill of Australians of Mediterranean descent, but somehow very Anglo sister Rob does a better job!  He also focused on methods that use the mildest possible ingredients to remove the olive bitterness.  And if you want to just remove excessive saltyness from shop-bought olives, or just improve their taste and keep them longer, jump straight to the oil steps.

“Well there are many, many methods for pickling olives but here I give the two methods that have worked well for me loosely based on my friend Paul’s [see buthkuddeh link below] method:

Method 1 – Good for green and for black firm olives

1.2. Give each olive a small slit with a sharp knife or bash with the bottom of a bottle to break the skin only
2. Soak olives in plain water changing the water fully each day.  You need to do this long enough for the strong acid flavour to leach out. Taste an olive and see how bitter it is. Think about an olive you have liked and what degree of bitterness or otherwise it had. When the olives taste ok move to the next stage.
3.  Prepare brine solution by placing a fresh egg into a bucket with water and keep adding salt and stirring it in slowly until the egg floats to the surface and shows a circle of shell about the size of a five cent coin.
4. Soak the olives in the brine until the olives taste salty enough for you. Don’t change the brine solution until you are happy with the level of saltiness of the olive. Give the olives a bit of a tumble each day.  Do not forget them in the brine otherwise they will undergo cellular collapse and go soft.
5. When they are ready for bottling, drain them and wash them to get excess brine off.
6. Sterilise some old bottles or preserving jars. Pop the olives in. As you do you can add whatever flavourings you like – thinly sliced garlic is always welcome, as is crushed dried oregano, or a split red chilli, , Sage and thyme go well, peppercorns too.   Fill the jar with a good quality olive oil. Don’t fill it with brine like I did once as the olives will have that cellular collapse you don’t want. Leave them in the pickling oil for at least 3 -4 weeks before eating.

Method 2 – To end up with dry salted black olives only

1.Again, start with nice firm olives, but make these ones also nice and plump.
2. Get a white plastic bucket with tight fitting lid and make holes in the bottom and the lid.
3. Put a layer of salt on the bottom of the box.  Toss the olives on top – don’t slit them.  Cover with another thick layer of salt and repeat the process.
6.Leave untouched for three or four days. Then, each day, mix the olives and salt together by turning the bucket over.
7. What should happen is that the salt will get wetter and go a nice mauve colour as it drains the moisture out of the olive.
8. As the moisture drains out, and put some new salt in and mix it with the olives.
9. When the olives have shriveled up and are nice and salty (check those olives!), take them out of the salt, wash them, dry them and store them in an airtight container in a little oil just coating the olives. You can at this stage put in some finely chopped garlic, crushed oregano, and maybe some chili flakes.
Websites for further research:
www.buthkuddeh.com.au (look for ‘olives’ under recipe link)
www.sbs.com.au/food (search on olives and Steve Manfredi)
www.abc.net.au (Gardening Australia factsheet on olives)

EDIBLE QUOTE

Today’s came from Luke Nguyen’s cookbook  The Songs of Sapa, which has lots of traditional Vietnames sayings and their meanings scattered among the recipes.

When drinking water, remember where it flowed from; when eating fruit, remember who planted the tree.

In life, always be thankful for how you got there, and remember who helped you get there.