An eventful weekend

I believe in having a voice. 

I also believe strongly in baked goods. 

So I was absolutely delighted to have my opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend. 

It has been a strange week in Australia - first the budget was announced including a hidden statement that Australia will not open its borders till mid-2022, then there were different perspectives and new words like "Hermit Kingdom" and "Fortress Australia" were hurled into Australian consciousness. 

I had written my own piece in the forty minutes before sunrise on Thursday. The pandemic has changed my sleep pattern drastically and I often wake in the dark now. I thought about the days and months stretching into the future, it felt like a grey amorphous mass. When will we open up again and rejoin the world? Why are we locked up in Australia like we are criminals, and treated like criminals if we want to return home? I felt waves of despair, hope, overwhelm, and confusion. So I decided to get up and write down my thoughts. 

For me these feelings had been percolating for some time, but the straw that broke the camel's back came when the government threatened Australian citizens who return from India with imprisonment. Let's get this straight: 

1. Australian citizens of Indian descent gave up their Indian passports to become Australians. 

2. They cannot hold dual Indian and Australian passports and do NOT have another "home".

3. Citizenship as defined by human rights is the right to reside in and return to that country. These people have become temporary refugees by the law of Australian government. 

4. What kind of country imprisons its own citizens for returning to its own country?

The most incredible thing was not just this extraordinarily racist law that was introduced, it was the fact that the government representing the majority voice expected this to just slide right in and potentially win them more votes. Many people thought this was fantastic and the government was doing great to keep the Indians out.

I have been boiling with rage for a couple of weeks now about this and the opinion piece slid out from my soul effortlessly. I don't know what motivated me to send it to the newspaper, it was a small impulsive moment. I hit "Send' without proofreading it and went to work. I was surprised to hear the same day from the SMH Opinions editor.  

This is my voice, and I am proud to speak the minority voice. 

I was also stoked to go to a tart course at the Australian Patisserie Academy and work with dough! 

They have some serious machines for mixing here... 

It all starts with pate sucree, the traditional sweet shortcrust pastry for tarts. Our teacher gave up heaps of tips and it came together like a dream. We made a plain one and a cocoa one for two large tarts. Once blast-freezed, the dough rolled quite easily, much easier than my previous attempts at home!

They had also an industrial rolling machine, but I wanted to try it by hand. It worked out pretty well and she gave us lots of tips on how to get the tart shape just perfect. 

And of course she was right! most of our tarts did not even shrink even though we did not blind bake them, apparently if you make the shape properly it is not necessary!

Here is my cocoa crust after baking, I was pretty happy with the evenness of the crust!

We filled the plain crust with a passionfruit filling and the cocoa crust with a chocolate coffee ganache - so yum but we were not allowed to lick the spoons! 

We also made these little tarts with the leftover filling, and the pink one is a raspberry filling that we made separately. The passionfruit mini tarts were topped with a passionfruit gelatine glaze, and the raspberry one with piped white chocolate mousse and fresh berries. Don't they look divine! 

And here the piece de resistance - the passionfruit tart with Italin meringue. I'm not the biggest fan of meringue so I did a decorative border. The passionfruit filling was intensely tart! 

And the second  piece de resistance - the chocolate coffee tart was topped with coffee chantilly cream, dollops of dark chocolate and hazelnuts. 

What a great day's work!

In my kitchen: May 21

The month of April just about breezed past, let's take a peek at my food life...

In the garden...

I harvested the rest of the green beans as it is getting colder now. really enjoying getting some fresh rocket or raddichio from the garden for salads! 

I still haven't done my winter planting in the veggie patch yet because I was away the last 2 weeks on holidays, but this beetroot I planted in a large pot. I wonder how one knows when the beetroot is big enough to pull out? 

We had such a glut of purple shiso this year that I ended up making a lot of pickles..

In the kitchen...

I had a few days where I was quite obsessed with food styling. I am also obsessed with simple pastas - sauces that come together while the pasta is cooking. Here I had my spaghetti with home grown tomatoes, basil, a few beetroot greens (well I was thinning the beetroot!) and cannellini beans. Words cannot describe how delicious this was! 

We had vegan matzo ball soup for Passover. I bought the matzah meal from Woolies in Double Bay and ran into a Jewish lady who started telling me the "best" way to make the matzo balls... never mind we threw out her suggestions to make this vegan version. 

On the baking front...

I made a traditional Italian Colomba di Pasquale (Easter dove bread) - I've been experimenting more with Italian ideas the last year and I certainly had no idea that this even existed! It was a pretty complex recipe. The inside was chockablock full of dried fruit, and I decorated the dove with flaked almonds. I was pleased with how soft pull-aparty it was (really like a panettone in texture) and we demolished this in a few minutes... 

One day I was in the mood for babka so I made this sourdough chocolate babka for the medical team on that evening.   

This was one of my best babkas. The enriched dough was just offset by the slight sourdough tang. Every mouthful was full of warm melting chocolate and rich buttery bread. Heaven!

Onto the Food and Music series...

I also made this lemon tart using lemons from my friend's tree. I used a traditional Pate sucree recipe and completely invented the filling using what I had in the fridge - a bit of Greek yoghurt, some cream, 3 eggs and the juice of 2 large lemons. It was a miracle it set! We ate this along with Beethoven's Op 18 No. 1 arranged for piano 4 hands, and Ravel's Ma Mere L'Oye,

I also had leftover pastry and filling to make these little lemon tarts, which I shared with my string quartet. These were served up with Beethoven's Op 59 No 1 the first Razumovsky quartet and a tiny bit of Mozart's Dissonance quartet (sadly one of us hates Mozart...)

And who doesn't love chips? They were part of a salmon + chips dinner we had along with Dvorak's Dumky Piano Trio, one of my favourites. I've been having so many problems with my hands, I'm grateful to have any playing time at all.. 

Finally the curveball this month is my dad's current dog. My dad has been training guide dogs & therapy dogs for the last decade and he is currently hosting dogs waiting for their permanent placement. Darla has been with him for almost 2 months and she is just the sweetest, most affectionate dog. All the dogs my dad has are adorable, but this one is really special! 

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the monthly In My Kitchen series - thanks for hosting Sherry!