Skip to main content

Cookbooks 11: Laurel Evelyn Dyson



11. Laurel Evelyn Dyson. The bird on the cover is a King Parrot, painted by Captain John Hunter sometime between 1788 and 1790, which makes me wonder where the cherries came from. Dyson produces an embellished version of the jest, which basically runs “Boil a stone and a galah in a large pot. When the stone is soft enough to pierce with a fork, the bird is ready to serve.’ Similar instructions pertain for preparing cockatoos, parrots and other Australian birds. Today this colonial recipe betrays the European resistance to eating native fauna and flora, as well as a denial of their life-giving sustenance. One prefers sheep to kangaroo, and anyway what’s the kangaroo equivalent of mutton? There will be an answer, but not in English. That said, Dyson’s culinary history not only includes everything you’d expect, pavlova, Anzac biscuits and lamingtons (so much sugar!) but recipes for ginger-leaf barramundi, eucalyptus and honey lollies and, thanks very much, kangaroo kebabs. Dyson argues that the Australian barbeque is traced back through campfire tucker to Aboriginal cookery over hot coals, in one unbroken line. Her book belongs on the ledge with other such histories, ‘One continuous picnic’ by Michael Symons, for example, and ‘Eating between the lines’ by Rebecca Huntley, though Dyson’s book has the best, the most wonderful list of sources for all her recipes and theories. Do yourself a flavour, order a copy today.

Recipe: Peach Melba, like so much Australian cuisine, flourishes in the curiouser and curiouser relationship that exists between here and elsewhere, one that informs everything: ingredients, traditions, methods, memories. Australians enjoy this dish, only half aware that it was invented by arguably the most famous of all French chefs, Auguste Escoffier, at the Savoy Hotel in London. Laurel Evelyn Dyson’s version uses 4 ripe PEACHES, not tinned peaches, plunged in boiling WATER for 20 seconds then immersed in cold water. Some people, Nigella Lawson for example, add 2 tablespoons of LEMON JUICE to the water, possibly to keep the peaches from turning brown, but this is not in Escoffier. Peel and cut in half, discarding the stones. Combine one and a half cups of water with three-quarters of a cup of SUGAR and 1 VANILLA BEAN and boil on moderate heat. Simmer five minutes. Add the peach halves and simmer 8-10 minutes. Let cool in the syrup and refrigerate. Purée 200 grams of RASPBERRIES in a blender. Strain through muslin to remove the seeds. Stir in enough CASTOR SUGAR to sweeten, about one and a half tablespoons, then chill. To serve, spread VANILLA ICECREAM in the dessert dishes, lift peaches out of their syrup with a slotted spoon, placing two halves in each dish. Spoon over some raspberry sauce, then serve.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy?

This is one of two short papers given by Philip Harvey at the first Spiritual Reading Group session for 2014 on Tuesday the 18 th of February in the Carmelite Library in Middle Park. He also gave a paper on that occasion, which can be found on the Library blog, entitled ‘A Rationale for Purgatory’ . Nadezhda Mandelstam recalls in one of her books how her husband, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, would say that when reading poetry we can spend a great deal of time discussing what it means, but the first and main question about a poem is not what does it mean, but why was it written. That is the place to start. Here are eleven reasons that I offer quietly to help us think about this poem: Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy? You may have other reasons and these are invited. We will spend most of our time today looking at meanings, but also at why. I wrote these out as they occurred to me, so there is no priority order. 1.      He wrote the poem because of Florence. Many o

The Walk (Seamus Heaney)

This poem was read aloud at Janet Campbell’s funeral in Hamilton in Victoria in December 2006. Janet was a great lover of poetry all her life, a great reader of poetry, and she read everything of Seamus Heaney. Indeed, when she worked in Melbourne or London bookshops Janet would grab hold of Faber pre-publication copies of Heaney if they came into the backroom, and disappear for days, copying lines onto postcards for her friends, transferring lines into her lifetime of diaries. Diaries that were also a lifeline. Janet read everything, but Heaney was one of the regulars. Seamus Heaney keeps a tight line. He is rarely though completely opaque and the way into this poem is the word ‘longshot’. We only find in the second of the two poems that we are being asked to look at two photographs. Or, at least, poems that are like photographs. Or, better still, strong memories that have taken on in the mind the nature of longshots. The two poems in one are reminders of close relationships.

The Poetry of Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams delivers the twelfth John Rylands Poetry Reading last year   This is a paper given by Philip Harvey in the Hughes Room at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne on Sunday the 6 th of December as one in an Advent series on religious poets. The original title of the paper was ‘The text that maps our losses and longings’. Everything Rowan Williams says and writes reveals a person with a highly developed sensitivity to language, its force, directness, instantaneousness, its subtlety, indirectness, longevity. A person though may speak three languages fluently and read at least nine languages with ease, as he does, and still not engage with language in the way we are looking at here. Because Rowan is unquestionably someone with a poetic gift. By that I don’t just mean he writes poetry, I mean he engages with the life of words, their meanings, ambiguities, colours, their playfulness, invention, sounds. We find this in those writings of his that deliberate