The Apple Project

I'm not sure how The Apple Project started, but like many great projects, it just started itself... 

Maybe because apples are so delicious in winter? They are such a melty, cinnamon-y and comforting fruit. 

I made most of these apple projects from apples sourced from the Newcastle Farmers Market. They are such amazing people and the apples are just so much better than those in supermarkets. I also love that they are not packaged, and the apples have no stickers!  

May 28: Apple Cake 

My office weeks are great - I catch up with the trainees I'm supervising, talk with colleagues on their projects, read the latest papers, do my admin work... and usually I bake on Fridays! I rarely bake cakes, so this was quite a feat for me. 

3 June: Apple Pie

I love pie, most of all - latticing pie! I brought this pie to the Merewether ensemble, where we enjoyed it after music. The clarinettist always proclaims to not like sweets, but he gobbled his down before everyone else did! 

6 June: Vegan apple cake

I was on ward service on this Sunday and made this vegan upside down apple cake. I par-cooked the apples the night before and whipped up the cake batter in the morning before work. We ate this in the sunshine on the ICU balcony for team lunch, with a pour of maple syrup that I got in Canada on my last trip in 2019. 

 

11 June: Apple cinnamon scroll

This was Barney's birthday, so of course I had to make some kind of sourdough thing! I brought this to work at the Private where the nurses oohed and aahed over the smell of apples wafting out from my office. What a morning tea treat it was! and happy birthday to Barney!

 

19 June: Apple strudel

Of the entire project, this was probably the only spectacular flop. The pastry was way too hard and set like concrete after I mis-read the temperature dial and baked it at 100 degrees. Anyway my string quartet was so forgiving and we ate it anyway after dousing it with liberal amounts of yoghurt. Incidentally, this was the last time my quartet met before the lockdown. 

23 June: Traditional apple slice

I thought I'd make something "Australian" and followed the traditional apple shortbread slice recipe from Not Quite Nigella. Had these with my piano duet friend along with some Mozart violin sonatas. 

1 Jul: Fancy apple frangipane tart with salted caramel drizzle 

This was the most complex of all the apple recipes I tried - I made a traditional sweet shortcrust pastry, a frangipane filling, topped it with apples and made a salted caramel. I made this with my friend's daughter, who loves baking. My friend said that her daughter wouldn't want to actually make it but she did every single step with me! Children are amazing like that if you give them the opportunity to try things out.  

10 Jul: Bavarian apple torte

By this point, Sydney had been in lockdown for a couple of weeks. My friend sent me this recipe from a Hetty McKinnon cookbook she has and I said I would give it a go for my apple project. The inside was set lusciously soft like a custard. 

16 Jul: Stromboli 

Friday baking at the Private again. I saw the recipe for a stromboli one time and I was curious about how it would work. Turns out that stromboli is a made up food by Italian Americans! I stuffed this with apples, caramelised onions and gruyere.  

18 Jul: The vagina project 

I have a recurring dream where I am teaching people how to cook things, and one dream in July I was baking breads shaped like genitalia. I drew the design as soon as I woke up, and I thought I'd try making it. This wasn't the actual design in the dream, but hey I had to cross it with apples since I had so many apples at home!

22 Jul: Birthday cake 

Well, this year I was a bit iffy about spending my birthday alone in lockdown, but it turned out just fine in the end. I baked this cake for myself and took it to work. It was the only one-bowl easy recipe that I could muster up in my lacklustre state, but it was pretty good! 

30 Jul: Apple strudel, take 2

I made this with store-bought filo pastry. The filling was caramelised apple, walnut and raisins - it worked out a lot better than take 1's concrete strudel, and so much easier too!

8 Aug: Apple rosti 

I lost the picture, but I grated a granny smith into my potato rosti and it lent a nice sweetness to it! 

13 Aug: Vegan apple muffins

I make a lot of vegan things because one of my close friends is vegan. In lockdown she became my singles buddy so when we went for a walk along the sea, I whipped up these super quick muffins. They were a bit dry but we enjoyed them with a cup of tea. 

 

20 Aug: Apple banana muffins

One day I peeled 30kg of over-ripe bananas for Ozharvest and took a few home, then I made these apple banana muffins that I ended up dropping off contact-less for a few friends. Baking really kept me going through this lockdown.. 

29 Aug: Vegan apple pie

I thought this was going to be the end of the apple project, the grand finale being my favourite pie. I made this with copha - not recommended cos the chunks did not grate well and it was super hard to incorporate into the pastry! It was hard work but super delicious in the end. 

 

6 Sep: Challah

Alas, we finally reached the end of the apple project. The finale turned out to be a challah for Rosh Hashanah, stuffed with apples sweetened with maple syrup. I used a yudane method to make the bread super soft, and it was dreamy and pillowy. 

So that's it, the end of the Apple Project. I've moved onto a different one now, maybe next winter there will be a second apple project, let's see! 

In My Kitchen: September 2021

Oh August. I wrote a huge introduction on how difficult the lockdown has been this month, but upon reading it again I've decided to stay focused on IMK - I am just so happy that the first of the month rolls on by and it's time to revisit my food photos again. 

In my garden...

I have taken a lot of solace in my snow peas, which have flourished during August. There's nothing like picking a few peas to munch on every day after work. 

I've had a lot of success growing radish - it grows quickly and consistently gives me pockets of pepperiness for my salads. 

The rainbow chard and kale took a long time to get started - maybe over a month in the 1-2 inch height stage, before they finally went through a growth spurt. I adore the vibrant colour! 

 

In my kitchen...

I made wontons with some of the turnips from my garden. The greens are kind of spiky but they mince down well - the traditional Shanghainese wonton is made with a vegetable called shepherd's purse, and this was pretty close.  

I started this oyster mushroom farm, which was a birthday present. What a fun weekend project it was, and now it's hiding in a corner waiting to grow. 

I had a profusion of super sour mandarins from the farmer's market so I made a few jars of mandarin jam which turned out really well. I've been having them on everything from toast to pancakes to straight out of the jar. 

On the baking front... aka. Crazy complex baking projects that kept me sane

One weekend I made this zebra bread... it's actually a vegan recipe made with tangzhong, so it kept soft for quite a few days. I did have to adapt it for sourdough, but it worked well.

Another weekend I made leopard bread... 

These were vegan croissants I made for my friend B. I did some research into the science of the butter block in laminating dough and it was super interesting - one needs ~80% fat and so I had to melt copha (100% fat) and nuttelex (60% fat) to make my own vegan 80% blend, which I then set together to make the "butter" block! It laminated quite well and the texture was great, though the flavour was not as rich as butter. 

I made these steamed breast buns at the request of my high school friends (when we get together we are very juvenile!) I made a Hokkaido milk tangzhong dough thinking I would bake them, but I ended up steaming them instead. I made a custard filling for the inside, hoping they would squeeze out, but the egg ended up setting during the steaming process. The chocolate nipples were delicious!

Onto the Food and Music series... 

Due to the lockdown, there has been very little music making in August. I made this black forest cake for my piano duet friend who had her birthday during the lockdown. She is my singles buddy so we were able to celebrate her birthday together. Afterwards we played Schubert's Death and the Maiden - I know, not exactly the prime birthday choice, but it reflects my inner turbulence. 

My string quartet is still meeting once or twice a week on zoom. We drink tea, knit and chat about what we are doing in the lockdown (mostly cooking, knitting and jigsaws). I am very grateful for the support that they have given me in this time, and we are very much looking forward to playing music together again. 

And finally, the curveball. A few months ago, I signed up to volunteer for Ozharvest, an organisation which focuses on the minimisation of food waste and food rescue. I have been cooking in the Ozharvest kitchen where we prepare meals for charities serving the homeless and disadvantaged people. It is inspiring to work with other volunteers who are passionate about the cause. It's amazing to see a pile of food that would have otherwise gone to landfill being turned into something that feeds people in need. When we sit down to have staff lunch, it is a nice way to connect with the food that we are cooking - we have it for lunch, and someone else will be having it for dinner.

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the IMK series. Thanks Sherry!

In My Kitchen: August 2021

Oh July. Sydney was in lockdown for all of July, and as a result I was separated from my dad, my friends and my string quartet. It has made me so grateful for my Newcastle friends, for the nice weather and the fact that we are still able to go to the beach in the middle of winter. 

I haven't done heaps of cooking and baking this month, but I did stick to The Apple Project, where I bake something with apple every week... 

This was a French-style sweet shortcrust with a frangipane filling and drizzled with salted caramel (I did not know I love salted caramel, but I know now!) 

An apple, caramelised onion and gruyere stromboli. Kind of like a pizza dough. I added beetroot puree to the dough and it was pink while I was forming the pastry, but it completely baked out to a neutral colour!

Bavarian apple torte from Hetty McKinnon's book Community. Most of my friends know I'm doing my apple project now, and one of them sent me the recipe. It has a cream cheese filling that sets like a custard. Delicious! 

This was my birthday cake this year. I was feeling quite sad and looking for a one bowl recipe. The crust was kind of cookie like but the inside was luscious. My birthday ended up being better than I thought - I shared the cake with my work friends and had an early mark to go to the beach. 

Other things in my kitchen...

I tried out a 50% rye recipe just to do some pretty scoring. A higher rye percentage makes the dough quite firm and easier to score, I think it worked out pretty well! 

I've been kind of obsessed with beetroot puree and here I made them into Chinese style dumplings. The colour stayed pink after cooking! 

The first baguettes of this winter. 

My friend visited me just before lockdown and brought me these little single-serve wines, from a winery on the mid north coast. I used some of it in making a mushroom risotto (the ultimate winter comfort food for me) and drank the rest with my dinner. 

Onto the Food and Music series... 

This was an apple strudel (also part of the apple project) I made for a dinner with my piano duet friend. We had a traditional German dinner with sauerbraten, braised red cabbage, dumplings, some of my sourdough and finished it off with strudel. After strudel we played Mozart's D major violin concerto and then the Glinka viola sonata (played on the violin, because my viola is in lockdown in Sydney). I haven't been playing much music these days, mostly preferring to drink tea and write... but I am getting back to it!

And the curveball for this month.. 

An amazing bouquet of flowers I received for my birthday from S. I haven't written much about it, but the long and the short of it is - I met S on a music trip to Paris in October 2019 where we played music together. He is an ex professional violinist turned mathematics professor. We made plans to meet up again in early 2020, but a curveball called Covid was thrown our way and we have been in limbo since. Our romance has been both tumultuous and extraordinary. I am not sure how many times in my professional career I have said to patients and families that we can only "take it one day at a time". I am learning the difficulties of this every day, yet somehow the sun still manages to rise and set anyway. 

Thanks for visiting my kitchen this month, and thanks to Sherry for hosting the In My Kitchen series. I really relish the opportunity to revisit my food photos!

On drawing

Last year, all our lives turned upside down due to COVID19. After the first lockdown in NSW, we finally started to socialise again with some restrictions. My friend J visited me in Newcastle for a weekend and she wanted to do a live drawing class that she had seen advertised on SBS. 

So on one Saturday night, we sat down with glasses of wine, a stack of scrap paper and some pencils that she had brought up from Sydney. We followed the instructions on TV to draw their live models... 

To my complete and utter surprise, I had a lot of fun.

I had never considered myself to be an "arty" person. In fact, the narrative I had was that I'd used all my "artistic cells" on music, and that I was never good at art, whether making or appreciating. 

But that live drawing class planted a tiny little seed in my consciousness. At that time, I didn't even have a rubber at home, nor a pencil sharpener. The only pencil I had was in my violin case, used to mark fingerings on music. 

A few weeks later, I walked past an art shop that was closing down. I had never even gone into this kind of shop before, but the almost-empty shelves beckoned me - surely it was easier to choose supplies when there was hardly anything left? I bought a small tin of charcoal pencils, and a notepad. It cost just over $10 - I can afford that, right? Just see how it goes. I thought to myself 

So that is how I started to draw. 

I drew first some plants and flowers from my garden. Then I found an ancient Italian vegetarian cookery book with lots of pencil drawings of Italy, and these really appealed so I started to copy them. Then I started to draw whatever I felt like.

It is liberating. I'm not drawing for anyone or anything, to be assessed or even to become competent. I draw simply because I like drawing and I feel like drawing. 

These days I have little stubs of charcoal or pencils in various handbags, and I find myself scribbling things in my journal, on the back of receipts, or even on napkins. Though I experimented with other mediums, I come back always to pencil and charcoal. I love the process of outlining in pencils and how charcoal smudges messily. 

Thank you to all the random people who have come up to me in cafes and parks to remark upon the mere fact that a middle aged woman is drawing for joy, however childish the doodles look. Quite a few have said that I am "brave", as if society expects that you can only draw if it "looks good". What does "look good" mean anyway?  

The other day, I was reading by the sea, and this passage in the book brought back a puzzle piece from the depths of my memory.

As a leaving present to Max Hodler, Gustav had made a copy of the map of Mittelland in his room. He'd coloured the land green and the rivers blue.  From <The Gustav Sonata> by Rose Remain. 

This sentence suddenly brought me back to when I was 12 years old. 

We were extremely poor at the time, both my parents working multiple jobs to establish financial security after we had moved to Australia. Somehow we had become acquainted with a wealthy family, who had a little girl called Angela born in the same month as me. It's hard to imagine now, how my parents must have felt. What was it like for them to drop me off at their big luxurious house, knowing that I would be having fancy afternoon teas that they could never imagine? 

Angela and I were both learning the piano. Where I was playing on an old out-of-tune piano with wonky keys that the neighbours had thrown out on the street, she had a shiny black Yamaha piano in which you could see your reflection. And all the keys on her piano worked. I had insisted to my parents that I did not need piano lessons - in retrospect, even the 12 year old me knew that we did not need more financial strain in our lives. Perhaps my parents thought I could learn something from Angela, since she was getting "proper instructions". 

In the month that we both turned 12, Angela was extremely excited about the birthday party she was going to have. It is not a tradition in my family to celebrate birthdays, but Angela's kindly mother said that I would be welcome to celebrate with them. 

Angela had been talking for weeks about the presents she was going to receive. I knew there was nothing I could bring to her as a gift that would compare to those presents, but I came up with a genius idea - we both loved the Simpsons and I thought I could make her a drawing of the Simpson family. I can't remember how long it took me to make the drawing, but I was really proud of it at the end. I had traced the outline till it was firm and coloured it exactly right. I rolled up the drawing and tied it with a little bow. 

At the birthday party, Angela was wearing a beautiful doll-like dress, she looked just like a princess. All her friends from her fancy private school were there, and I felt very out of place. She was so excited, exclaiming at each present after she tore the packaging from them one by one. When she came to my present, she took one look at it, said thanks and placed it aside. 

After so many years, I remember exactly the feeling that I had at that moment. My soul had been crushed because I had worked so hard to produce something that I was really proud of, but it was put aside thoughtlessly as if it was something of no value. 

I never drew for pleasure again. 

Until I somehow rediscovered it 25 years later during COVID.

I wonder where Angela is now, and whether she is still playing the piano. And where is that drawing of the Simpson family? Is it decomposing in a landfill heap somewhere? 

What a strange side effect of the pandemic, but here, I have my drawing mojo back. 

And I love it, because it brings me joy. 

In My Kitchen: July 2021

June was just a terrible month - S' father was diagnosed with a terminal illness, we got more travel exemption rejections and rode the waves of hopelessness.. 

Thankfully I had already started doing The Apple Project, where I bake something different featuring apple every week. So let's go first to the apples this month... 

Vegan apple upside-down cake, served with a splosh of maple syrup that I brought back from Toronto (flashback to the days we could travel!) 

How can one go past apple pie? Latticing a pie crust is one of my favourite activities of all time

Apple cinnamon sourdough scroll 

Classic Australian apple shortbread slice thanks to Not Quite Nigella's recipe 

Non Apple things in my kitchen...

I'm loving Asian style breads at the moment - sometimes you just want something soft and pull-apartable. This bread I made with a tangzhong milk sourdough - split into a plain milk dough, stuffed with salted coconut; and a matcha dough, stuffed with red beans. They were pillowy and fluffy, just a dream texture! 

My mahjong group hosted an elaborate Hainanese chicken rice dinner - I think every Malaysian doctor in Newcastle was at this party! The rice cooked in chicken fat was a real treat. 

I got these gorgeous lemons from a friend's tree... 

When life gives you lemons, make a lemon tart. Making the lemon curd was unbelievable, I could just eat that stuff by the spoonful. I took it to work, melted the dark chocolate in the microwave for 30 seconds and scooped it into a 20mL syringe (sterile of course) - amazingly easy to drizzle! I guess you gotta use the tools that you have...

This was probably the most pretty thing I baked this month, a sourdough focaccia. I posted some of my sourdough starter Barney to S' mother in Italy, and she has been baking with him for the last 7 months. This was a focaccia that we made in tandem and in solidarity. 

Onto the Food and Music series... 

These soft garlic scrolls were served up with goulash soup and a few Mozart violin sonatas. With my piano duet friend, we've moved onto the Mozart project - last year we did the Beethoven project where we played all of his violin sonatas. 

And with my string quartet group, we had goat tagine with couscous, the slow cooking infusing delicious spices throughout the tagine. It's a quartet favourite for a reason! We played Mozart's Divertimento for string trio in E flat, and a bit of the Mendelssohn D minor piano trio. Sadly my hands are not in great shape at the moment and I can barely manage on the piano. 

And the curveball...

I finally got Murakami's new book, a collection of short stories. Murakami is probably the "thing" that I  have been obsessed with for the longest time - I started reading his works in high school and haven't stopped for two decades! I can't wait to read this one. 

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings - as always, thanks for hosting Sherry!