In my kitchen: April 2020

How much has the world changed since the last IMK? My heart goes out to everyone, and definitely I am glad for the diversion for reviewing what I ate...

On the garden front, there has been some excellent vegetable growing in my dad's garden. When I left for "the war", I took a lot of photos of his garden, and looking back on them really sustains my soul now..

There are amazing bitter melons, both the "Chinese" kind and the "Indian" kind - a little shorter and more spiky (pictured).

There is also an incredible chilli plant from which I picked this bakers dozen of little chillis.

Lots of gorgeous cherry tomatoes for salads. The summer has been long this year and great for tomatoes.

These are some vegetables I picked one day - the loofahs on the left are called silk melons in Chinese, so soft and luscious. Also a couple of okra, shishito peppers, snake beans and in the back the purple weed vegetable that grows everywhere.

Flour is now a huge commodity as seemingly the entire world has taken up baking! I check every time I go to the supermarket and alas, I have not found flour at any of my locals.

So I have decided to ration my supplies and bake once a week. I've sliced the slices smaller so I can still have my 2 pieces of toast in the morning. How I look forward to the days when we can buy flour at will and bake any time!

Just before the madness of Covid started we had a vegan dinner at home with my beloved friend B. We had this crazy idea to have a vegan soup club - wouldn't it be nice to quit our jobs (we are both ICU doctors) and start a soup cafe to serve a different vegan soup everyday. We decided the soups would be

1. Pumpkin
2. Lentil
3. Tomato & red capsicum
4. Potato & leek
5. Minestrone
6. Pea
7. Vegan ramen

We discussed which one should be no. 7 so much that I decided to make it.

This actually turned out really well! I steeped a bunch of shiitake mushrooms in vegetable stock then made a base of onion/garlic/ginger with miso, blended it with some of the mushrooms for the base. Then the rest was just preparing the vegetables, crisping the tofu and plating up.

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This was the other surprise find - miso glazed eggplant is so easy to make! Just a quick melting miso with mirin and sugar in a small saucepan, brushing it over the eggplant and grilling it. Such incredible flavours!


Onto the Food and Music series..

My friend Emily was visiting from Toronto and we had planned to spend 2 weeks together eating and playing music. Our plans were pretty much destroyed by Covid-19 and she ended up re-booking an earlier flight home.

Still, we squeezed in some playing with my usual quartet. The violist unfortunately couldn't make it so I switched to viola.

We ate these massive delicious prawns with chilli garlic and coriander as part of our extraordinary Aussie seafood feast (also featuring salt & pepper calamari and fresh deep ocean perch for mains). This feast was accompanied by the Faure piano quartet no. 1 - one of the two best piano quartets ever, both of them in C minor, Schubert's Death and the Maiden and a little light Beethoven Op 18 No.1 to finish as dessert.
  

Another day we had a gathering where we ate some Barry (son of Barney) the sourdough belonging to the cellist, with guacamole; goat tagine with couscous and salad. This feast was accompanied by Beethoven's Op 18 No. 4, probably the piece for our quartet, the other best piano quartet in the universe the Brahm's piano quartet in C minor and Aus Meinem Leben by Smetana, just an incredible work.

PS. If you are reading this and wonder what music is perfect to accompany the anguish that the world is feeling over Covid-19, please give the Smetana a listen

Before I departed for the covid-19 war, we had our very last gathering. We were sad that our little string quartet would not be gathering for some time. Our last hurrah featured a simple but delicious dinner of fish with veggies and potatoes

Our hearts were heavy but we take solace in our friendship, music making and merry meals. So much joy came from the last musical menu, Bach's Goldberg variations for string trio (is there another more perfect piece in the universe?), Dohnanyi's Serenade Op. 10, Dvorak's Piano trio Dumky and finally a couple of movements of the Mendelssohn Piano trio no. 2 in C minor.

I am trying to make sense of this world that we live in, and I am writing some of my covid thoughts down too. I know this too will pass and we will come out the other side (when there is flour and string quartets again!) I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly IMK event - thanks Sherry!