I love gnocchi (with bonus recipe)

I love gnocchi.

(The singular is gnoccho.)

Gnocchi were probably invented in the Middle East in Roman times.

They’re thick, soft dumplings made from semolina, wheat flour, breadcrumbs or similar ingredients. Using potato is a  recent innovation. The smaller forms are called gnocchetti (cute!).

The word gnocchi means ’lumps’ (how appetising, ‘Mum, can we have lumps for tea?’). The name may come from nocchio, a knot in the wood or from nocca (knuckle) – neither of which makes the name much more appealing.

The name is also used in France in the dish known as gnocchis à la parisienne, a hot dish comprising choux pastry gnocchi and béchamel sauce.

Gnocchi with tomato sauce is known as strangolapreti or strangoloprevete, meaning ‘priest stranglers’, because a local priest liked them so much and ate them so fast that he choked on them.

So why do they sink, then float when you cook them?

When gnocchi are placed in boiling water, the combined density of the ingredients is more than the density of the water, so the gnocchi sink. As the gnocchi warm up, it’s a bit like inflating a rubber dinghy at the bottom of a swimming pool - the air trapped in the dough expands and the combined density of the ingredients becomes less than the density of boiling water, causing the gnocchi to rise to the top.

There are about 250 calories in a cup of potato gnocchi.

Here is a recipe I made up for strangoloprevete gnocchi. It is dead (ha!) easy and delish. We're eating it at least once a week at the mo.

Mediterranean gnocchi

What you need:
3 chorizos, halved lengthways and sliced
2 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/3 cup semidried tomatoes
1/3 cup pitted Kalamata olives
1/3 cup roasted capsicum strips
350 grams passata
500 grams gnocchi
Shaved parmesan to serve

What you do:
While the water for the gnocchi is coming to the boil, pan fry the chorizo until the edges brown. Add garlic and chilli and stir until fragrant (about a minute). Add tomatoes, olives, capsicum and passata and simmer for five minutes (or until the gnocchi is cooked).

Serve the tomato topping over a bed of gnocchi finished with shaved parmesan.

(Serves three – looks small but is very filling!)

The Monstress foody myth busters #4

I received an email the other day, claiming that microwaving food in plastic wrap or plastic containers releases dioxins into the food and that these dioxins cause cancer:

Is this true?

In a word: nope.

Firstly, most plastics used in food wraps and packaging containers do not contain the chemical constituents that can form dioxins. Producing dioxins with these plastics would be like trying to make a ham and cheese sandwich without the ham...or the cheese...or the bread.

Secondly, dioxins are a family of compounds that are produced by combustion at high temperatures – I’m talking above 700 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, even if all of the dioxin ingredients were present, you would need to have a very hot fire in your microwave oven, in which case, not only would your food be cremated but your  microwave would be melted and you would probably have to call the fire brigade to put out the flaming inferno that was once your kitchen.

If you’re really intent on reducing potentially harmful carcinogens in your food during cooking, give your frying pan a rest instead.

Frying is the only form of cooking that produces trace amounts of dioxins in food. Oils and fats used in frying contain substances that begin breaking down into known carcinogens at high temperatures.

But for Thai fried rice, I'll take my chances.

Top 10 things not to eat on your first date

On her first dinner date with my father, my mother ordered spaghetti bolognaise…and immediately wished she hadn’t. My dad's too polite to say more and they ended up getting married, so it can’t have been that bad. But I do have a vision of slurpy sauce-coated pasta slopping down her chin.

A first date is stressful enough without worrying about tricky utensils, flying food, smears on your face, gunk in your teeth or bad breath. Think carefully about the implications of your order before you make your selection. Aside from stringy pasta, here are 10 menu items that should send you running.

1. Pesto anyone? Not unless you want your smile to look like a shrubbery. Avoid any clingy, leafy greens including spinach, seaweed and coriander.

2. Poppy, strawberry and sesame seeds are harder to dislodge than the aforementioned greenery. This goes double if you have braces.

3. Corn on the cob is a horror show waiting to happen. Not only will the kernels get stuck in your teeth, there’s no neat way to eat them and chances are you’ll end up with butter dribbling down your chin.

4. Garlic and onions - either of these pongy culprits could ruin any chance of a goodnight kiss.

5. Tacos ¬ putting your tacos together makes it hard to focus on your date. Tacos also have a massive potential slop-on-shirt factor.

6. Asian food - unless you’re confident with chopsticks. Eating Chinese with a fork looks uncouth and pathetic.

7. Spicy foods - gasping for breath, turning an interesting shade of beetroot, sweating and gulping your drink is not sexy.

8. A Big Mac.If you are on a first date at McDonald’s and you are old enough to watch an M-rated movie, this is utterly lame. If fast food was your date’s idea, ditch him. Now. Forever. If it was your idea, just go and shoot yourself.

9. Lobster - the other end of the spectrum but also fraught. Yes, it will look like money is no object but it stinks and it is harder to eat nicely than corn on the cob. You need a bucket of breath mints and a bib to even attempt lobster.

10. Beans - beanz meanz fartz. You don’t want to spend the post-dinner movie blasting the big brown horn.

Image: Paul

Marmalade is toast

Kaos café (and its alter ego, Soak) – a long standing Hobart icon – is no more. I’m told it’s now called Marmalade.

What a stupid name (though no more stupid, I suppose, than Aubergine, The Lazy Bull, Say Cheese or Pop - what is it with these people???)

As far as I’m concerned, Marmalade is a cat’s name for the unimaginative (unless, of course, the cat is, say, black).

Does anyone even like marmalade?

Marmalade is old people’s food like bran, porridge, buttermilk and lambs fry. When I think marmalade, I picture a dusty old jar with a rubber-banded red gingham hat lurking in my grandmother’s pantry and filled with lumpy bitter orange glue.

Marmalade on toast? I think not. Give me a Sausage and Egg McMuffin any day.

Maybe Marmalade's target clientele is septuagenarians who don't like Maccas.


Image: healingdream

Hot and cold

I’ve just polished off a cold slice of Godfather-with-extra-cheese pizza for breakfast (and I didn’t even have a wine last night!).

I’m not prepared to get into a discussion about whether liking Domino’s is lame or not (there are worse brands). However, I am eager to defend my position on preferred pizza temperature.

Don’t get me wrong – hot, freshly cooked pizza when you are ravenous rocks. However, micro-zapped morning-after pizza tastes like wet cardboard, however luscious the topping, especially if you have the hangover from hell.

One person in my household thinks cold pizza is disgusting. That person is wrong. Serendipitously, it turns out that there is actually science behind cold pizza’s deliciousness.

A Scottish chemistry lecturer, Dr Maureen Cooper, from Stirling University, says cold morning-after pizza tastes so good because of the watery properties of the tomato puree.

A traditional pizza base has fibres that trap water, preventing it from seeping through to the cooked dough and making it soggy. Given that fat and water do not mix, the melted cheese topping then sits nicely above the puree.

‘Because the fat does not go through to the base, the pizza itself tastes so much better,’ Maureen says.

So there you have it, floating fat is the secret to the deliciosity of cold pizza (I'm glad I ate before I discovered that.)

Image: Suat Eman

The Monstress foody myth busters #3

Myth: the three-second rule

Drop food on the floor? No worries. If you pick it up within three seconds of it hitting the ground, you’re good to go.

Right?

Sadly, wrong.

This is a polite fiction, so, famous it scored its own episode of Seinfeld (only they called it the five-second rule – but what’s two seconds between sit coms and viewers). The rule claims that edibles can’t be contaminated by floor/ground germs if it’s snatched up fast enough.
According to the New York Times, ‘Quick retrieval does mean fewer bacteria, but it’s no guarantee of safety.’

Jillian Clarke of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign found that 63% of the people knew the rule. She also found that a variety of foods were significantly contaminated by even brief exposure to a tile inoculated with E.coli. On the other hand, Clarke found food wasn't especially contaminated on public flooring. Clarke received the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in public health (a parody award) for this work.

Clemson University conducted research on this as well. It may shock you that they found it’s probably more dangerous to eat food that you just dropped on your floor in the kitchen than on a footpath.

Bottom line: If it can be washed, wash it! If not … do you have a dog? Or a despised mother-in-law?

The Monstress foody myth busters #2

Myth: chicken soup helps with a cold.

You’re sick. You have no appetite. Hell, you can’t even breathe, let alone eat. But your mother/gran/girlfriend insists that chicken soup will help you feel better.

Make sense, right?

Right!

A 12th century physician named Moses Maimonides first prescribed chicken soup as a cold remedy and scientists are now backing him up.

Firstly, sipping the hot soup and breathing in the steam helps clear up congestion.

The warm soup helps soothe the symptoms of a sore throat.

Liquid helps you stay hydrated.

Chicken soup has as an ‘anti-inflammatory’ effect on body cells, to help reduce mucus production (that means less snot).

Chicken soup also slows the migration of white blood cells (called neutrophils) to the infection site and slows down inflammation, which can help reduce congestion.

Bottom line: it’s not exactly a cure for the common cold but chicken soup will help a bit. Lap up all the TLC you can get, especially if it’s in a steaming bowl.

The Monstress foody myth busters #1

Myth: hot tea cools you down.

It’s thirty five in the shade and some helpful friend or rellie swears the best way to cool down is by drinking hot tea. Their logic goes like this: the hot tea makes you sweat and that helps cool you down.

Make sense, right?

Wrong.

Ever wonder why no one ever suggests that lighting the fire, putting on a jumper or going to the gym will make you cooler, since these things make you sweat too?

Enter: thermodynamics. (I was probably napping when Mr Norton explained this back in the high school lab but it's not too hard to follow in the kitchen.)

The amount of heat you lose by sweating and evaporation will never exceed the amount of heat you gain via the hot drink.

Also, the extra heat from the tea makes blood vessels near your skin dilate to help cool your blood faster. The nerves in your skin can sense this, causing you to feel flushed and warm.

Not exactly the result you were looking for.

Bottom line: hot tea will make you sweat more and increase your cooling. However (and it’s a big one), the amount of extra cooling won't be enough to offset the heating-up from the tea.

So, next time someone says to drink hot tea in summer, don't rush to put the kettle on. Grab an icy G&T instead.

Pig wisdom

Do you become instantly wary the moment a food is called ‘sophisticated’? To me, ‘sophisticated’ in this context, sounds like ‘disgusting’. There aren’t too many regular foods I don’t eat but the artichoke is way up the list. Who wants to eat a thistle?

Artichokes are one of the oldest foods we know and there are 50 varieties grown worldwide. Zeus was said to have turned a scorned lover into an artichoke (see, he didn’t like them either).

If, for some weird reason, you ever decide to cook one, make sure you wear rubber gloves and don’t cook it in an aluminum pot - it will turn the pot grey.

Americans remove all but five to 10 millimetres of the stem, and cut away about a quarter of each leaf (scale) with scissors to remove the thorns, then boil or steam the artichoke. They often eat the leaves dipped in sauces and then eat the remaining heart after removing the inedible ‘choke’ (and it can choke you).

In Italy, artichoke hearts in oil are the usual vegetable for spring in a four seasons pizza (with olives for summer, mushrooms for autumn and prosciutto for winter).

The Spanish use more tender, younger and smaller artichokes sprinkled with olive oil and left in hot barbecue ashes, sautéed in olive oil with garlic, with rice as a paella or combined with eggs in a tortilla (frittata).

I accidentally ate an artichoke in 1999 at Colours Café when it arrived on a plate of tempura vegetables (and I still shudder at the experience). I wouldn’t recommend eating any kind of artichoke concoction, even if these vegies (technically flowers) are meant to help digestion, liver function, gall bladder function - and lower your cholesterol. Artichokes are also aphrodisiacs – but then so are champagne and chocolate and I know what I’d prefer to comsume.

Apparently, you can drink artichokes – you can make tea from them and Cynar is an Italian artichoke-flavoured aperitif.

In 1947 at the Artichoke Festival in Castroville, California, a young woman was crowned Miss California Artichoke Queen. This artichoke crown kickstarted the career of Miss Norma Jean Baker who would, of course, become Marilyn Monroe.

What’s the opposite of a testimonial? Here are three:

• In one short Three Stooges film, Curly calls an artichoke a smarty-choke, a party-smoke, an okey-doke, a feathered pineapple and a barbed-wire pickle. Guess he didn’t think much of them.

• In 77AD the Roman naturalist Pliny called the choke one of earth's monstrosities.

• Miss Piggy said: ‘These things are just plain annoying. After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual "food" out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps. Have the shrimp cocktail instead.’

5 potato facts

1. Mr Potatohead was the first toy ever advertised on TV.

2. The potato is about 80% water.

3. In 1995, potato plants were taken into space with the space shuttle Columbia. This was the first time any food was ever grown in space.

4. The world’s largest potato weighed more than eight kilos according to the Guinness Book of World Records. That’s enough for 73 lots of medium fries at McDonald's.

5. Potato blossoms used to be the hottest royal fashion accessory. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were both known to wear potato blossoms to spiff up their outfits.

11 fun things to do with the humble potato

...from the bland to the bizarre

1  Be Warhol-esque

Make prints. Cut your spuds in half and leave them overnight. Cut shapes like stars, triangles or (if you’re not very artistic - or if you're very artistic) more fluid, fractal shapes. Put paint on a sponge on a plate and dip the potato in it. Stamp shapes out on to paper.

2  Remove

Remove warts, the sting from burns and berry stains from your skin by rubbing them with a cut potato (the warts will probably take longer than the berry stains or burns). Remove salt from a soup when you’ve overdone it by adding a cut potato to absorb the excess.

3  Make money

Bet someone you can stab a (normal but sturdy) drinking straw right through a potato - chances are they won't believe you. It’s possible as long as you don’t hesitate. Go on. Try it. The straw penetrates the potato  because it is a strong cylinder made from thin plastic which also makes it sharp. Cylinders are strong if compressed from end to end, but not from the sides.

4  Use potato power

You don’t usually associate vegetables with electricity, but scientists in Israel recently discovered that zinc and copper electrodes added to a slice of boiled potato generate long-lasting electricity. Why boiled? Apparently, a boiled potato is ten times more electrifying than a raw potato.

5  Compress

Potatoes hold the heat and the cold very well, so they make good compresses. Heat a potato, wrap it in a cloth and use as a hot compress. Do the same with a cold one that has been in the freezer…or you could just use a compress you bought at a chemist, like a normal person.

6  Mask

Take a little mashed potato, add lemon juice and a teaspoon of milk. This (allegedly) makes a great 20-minute face mask. If it doesn’t, you can always scrape off the potato, roll it in to a ball, coat it in bread crumbs and deep fry it to make a hash brown. LOL. This is not so good for your skin.

7  Clean

Potatoes don’t just clean berry stains, they also clean silverware. Soak the family silver (I said ‘silver’, not ‘jewels’) for an hour in water that you have boiled your potatoes in. Remove the potatoes first, of course.

8  Look through a glass darkly (or in any other way)
Rubbing a potato on your specs can stop them fogging up (maybe I’ll be able to read in the bath again, after all). And if your windscreen wipers pack it in, wipe the windscreen with a cut spud to keep the water off (I have actually done this and it works…up to a point.)

9 De-puff

Puffy eyes? Apply a thin slice of cold potato to your eyes and leave on for five minutes. Then splash with cool water, put on your makeup and head to work. If the potatoes don’t work, the Revlon surely will!

10  Make a spudzooka

Fire potatoes out of a cannon – this is a fun project that (in case you need a justification) demonstrates the principles of physics. You can experiment with the basic design to tweak performance and learn valuable engineering lessons. Google ‘spudzooka’ for a how to.

11  Eat (duh...)

They’re not everyone’s plate of dinner but mashed, fried, baked or steamed, spuds rock. See Taste and search for 'potatoes' for something new to do with taters.

Image: Dmitry Maslov

Match the stars with their fav foods

Here's a list of celebs and a list of foods. Which stars go with which foods?

Nicole Kidman	Chinese food
Justin Bieber	Entirely indifferent to food - don’t really care
Katy Perry	Fried peanut butter, banana, and mayonnaise sandwiches
Queen Elizabeth II	Grapes and smoked haddock
Barack Obama	Grilled shrimp with mangoes and chilli
Lee Child	His wife’s cooking
Madonna	Mushrooms
Elvis	Pasta
Serena Williams	Spaghetti
Vidal Sassoon	Sugar
Buffalo Bob Smith	Sweet potato pie

                                                                                                              

Mushrooms
Katy Perry says: ‘I love mushrooms. I could eat a ton of them. I really love truffles but I hardly ever get them. Mushrooms in general though are so healthy and good for you. I can’t get enough.’

Grilled shrimp with mangoes and chilli
‘A fresh seafood platter with Sydney rock oysters, tiger prawns, mud-crab and lobster.’ Don’t hold back on the spice or the mangos, says Nicole.

Grapes and smoked haddock
As a child, Lizzie loved ‘crisp chocolate-coated peppermint creams’, barley sugar sweets and other treats (which were kept in a big glass jar on a side table in the living room). These days, for breaky she has tea and wheat toast with some light marmalade. But her fav? From among other foods, she is said to be especially partial to grapes and to smoked haddock.

Sweet potato pie
In October 2008, the Prez gave a speech that contained the word ‘pie’ 15 times (13 sweet potato, one coconut cream, one lemon meringue). Thanks, Barack.

Entirely indifferent to food
Lee Child says he doesn't really care what, when or if he eats. His favourite drink is black coffee, no sugar. Second would be champagne. But food isn't important.

Sugar
Madonna loves ‘anything with sugar in it'.

Fried peanut butter, banana, and mayonnaise sandwiches
Elvis. No wonder he got so chunky! (Btw, gross!)

Chinese food
Serena Williams is used to eating up and spitting out her opponents on the tennis court, but her favourite meal off the court is Chinese food.

His wife’s cooking
Vidal Sassoon loves his wife Ronnie’s cooking and says she ‘cooks in 21 tongues’. (Sounds kinky.)

Pasta
Who the hell is Buffalo Bob Smith? His real name is Robert Emil Schmidt and he created the (allegedly) famous TV puppet, Howdy Doody. (Guess I'm not that old.)

Spaghetti
Any self-respecting Bieber fan knows his fav foods is spag…wait? How can you be a Bieber fan and have self-respect?

How did you go?

Image: Carlos Porto

The Salvador Dali guide to cooking

If Salvador Dali were a chef, I’m sure these would be his top five culinary tips.

1. Give dishes long names
Dali’s full name was Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol, so he was probably missing the succinct gene. Why name a dessert Chocolate cheesecake when you could call it Creamy delicious, dark bittersweet chocolate cheesecake with tart raspberry coulis and ethereal crème Anglaise?

2. Use lots of Spanish ingredients
Dali was born in Spain, so I’ll bet he was a strong supporter of all things Spanish. For a Dali-esque dinner, your shopping list should include the following basics: olive oil, fresh garlic, capsicum, paprika, eggs, potatoes, parsley, tomatoes and tomato sauce, Spanish wine, rosemary, thyme, oregano, saffron, bread and milk.

3. Mix it up
In the interests of surrealism, there is no reason why you can’t use the garlic and saffron in the crème Anglaise and the capsicum and paprika in the raspberry coulis.

4. Consider carefully your cooking garb
I suggest wearing a kimono, every bit of bling in your jewellery box, and a tea towel on your head. Dalí developed a self-styled ‘Arab lineage’, claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors. This heritage, he said, gave him his love of everything gilded and excessive, his passion for luxury and his love of oriental clothes.

Dali also had a flamboyant moustache, so if you’re serious about getting in to the Dali cooking groove, get busy with the whisker cultivation.

For a completely authentic cooking outfit, consider a wetsuit. In 1936, Dalí took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition. He delivered his lecture wearing one of those old-fashioned (though probably modern at that time) deep-sea diving suits and a helmet (incidentally, he nearly asphyxiated). He arrived carrying a billiard cue and leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds but replicating the whole kit and caboodle might be a little over-the-top and you’ll need your hands free to beat the eggs and melt the watches.

5. Be flexible about cooking times
Dalí’s hallmark ‘soft watches’ suggest Einstein's theory that time is relative and not fixed. The idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to Dalí when he was staring at a runny piece of Camembert cheese on a hot day. So, cooking times may vary…or even progress indefinitely.

Image: Carlos Porto

Eating for free

Inspired by the story of the grim eater and by the fact that my grocery bill has risen about 30% in the last six months, I searched the web for free food ideas and here is a summary of what I found (from the semi-sensible to the desperate and disgusting).

1. Gather surplus
Know someone with a bumper crop of zucchini or tomatoes? Gardeners often need someone to offload their extras on to, especially if you cook up a nice dish and share it with them.

2. Sign up for freebies
Free offers abound on the web. Sign up for every cereal sample, muesli bar and snack that you can find, and enjoy a few meals on someone else's dollar.

3. Barter
Barter your skills and services for the foods that you need. A quick car repair or a bit of mending work could turn into your next meal. This is a sensible idea but while you’re not paying with cash, you’re still paying with time. And who has time?

4. Start a perennial garden
Annuals get all of the attention in the world of edible plants, but perennials are the real bargains. There is the small issue of start up costs to contend with but you could plant a garden of perennial herbs, vegies, fruits and legumes, and every harvest after the first will be free.

5. Visit your parents
Ah, the age-old practice of going back to your childhood home for free food. Most parents (especially mothers) wish their grown children would visit more. So, make them happy while feeding your face at the same time. While you are at it, take some laundry to throw in the wash. That will save you money on your electricity bill, as well. Besides, your Mum will probably do it for you. (Just kidding, Mum.)

Hell, while you're at it, inflict yourself and your housework on your siblings, friends and colleagues, too. Your sister could clean your shoes and your boss could wash your car. Maybe you could even shoot for aquaintance assistance. Your dentist could prepare you a roast while running your dirty dishes through her dishwasher. And your accountant - get him to wash the dog while the souffles are in the oven.

6. Donate blood
Not squeamish? Need a sugar fix? Donating blood will secure you a generous supply of cookies and juice. If the staff at the blood bank seem a bit stingy, tell them you are feeling light-headed. They don’t want you walking out the place and collapsing, so that should keep the cookies coming. In the process of procuring some free food, you will have helped to save a life. Sounds like a great way to spend an afternoon.

7. Learn about timeshare
If you have three hours to spare (yeah, right),sit through timeshare meetings and you will get something free in the end.

8. Get samples
Get free samples at the supermarket. Do you think they’d give you the demo schedule if you rang them?

9. Go to church
Festivals, meetings, openings, receptions – it seems every occasion includes food these days. Keep a look out for any event that offers free food to the public, and take advantage of it. Church events can be particularly fruitful. If God doesn’t strike you down for your ulterior motives, you’ll be all set for coffee and sandwiches after the service.

10. Say it’s your birthday
This is a great way to get a free drink, dessert or maybe even a meal at restaurants with a birthday club. Of course, you don’t have to reserve this for when it really is your birthday. However, many establishments have wised up to this trick and ask for ID, in which case you may find yourself in an uncomfortable position.

11. Forage
Learn how to identify edible foods in the wild, and enhance your diet with free-for-the-taking fruits, vegetables, mushrooms and nuts. You could even go fishing. Hmm, there’s so much wilderness in a capital city - not. If you did go further afield, you might even find some of those special mushrooms to change the colour of your impoverished day.

12. become a freegan
Where do all of those grocery store cast offs go? Usually straight to the skip bin. There's a subculture known as freeganism that attempts to put that waste to good use. Call me fussy, but I reckon if it goes in the skip bin, it stays in the skip bin.

So there you go – if you have no pride, no conscience, no sense of personal hygiene and tons of free time, you can practically eat for free. Personally, I think I’ll just buy less Chocolate teddy bears and more Home brand.

The grim eater

A funeral home has stopped a fake mourner gatecrashing funerals, eating the food on offer, and even taking home leftovers. He had a backpack filled with Tupperware containers, and when people weren't looking, he was stocking up.

The company eventually took a photo of the guy to distribute it to its branches.

The ‘grim eater’ attended up to four funerals a week during March and April this year before the funeral home stopped him. He stopped coming after a staff member took him aside, telling him he could still come to funerals but could not take food home with him.

Image: Simon Howden

Drinks I have known and (almost) forgotten

There are three drinks that will never again pass my lips:
• Stones green ginger wine
• Mercury cider
• Scotch whisky.

When I think of these, I think of them on the way back through my mouth. Yuck.

You’d think I would feel the same way about port after the cask debacle/s – but I can sip a post-dinner glass these days (not, however, if it came from a cask).

The most amazing drink I have imbibed was something called a Pan galactic gargle blaster from Rockefellers in Salamanca Place. I was underage and it was blue and bubbly and arrived in a fishbowl with multiple straws.

Another revelation was the worm. I can’t recall exactly how it went but it was a shooter with a squiggle of grenadine coated Advocaat suspended in something clear.

For a while, vodka and orange, vodka lime and lemonade, and Southern Comfort and Coke were the drinks de jour. But they’re too much like lolly water for my middle-aged tongue.

Important things I have learnt about drinks:
• Pernod is something to watch other people play with – it tastes vile
• paint your nails pink if you’re planning to drink Cosmopolitans, so you’ll match
• Midori and lemonade only tastes like cordial (ditto Anything Cooler or anything and raspberry) – it sneaks up and packs a punch.

Which reminds me, a couple of years ago, I had an intense crush on lemonade icy poles (Kirov lime vodka and Coke). Even though they’re brown and alcoholic, they taste like the real on-a-stick deal.

From the first taste, white wines progressed predictably from the cheap and sickly (fruity lexia), via moselle and riesling to chardonnay. There was a slight detour when I discovered sauternes but it hurts my teeth just thinking about the sweetness. After a brief and torrid fling with pinot gris, I settled in to a steady affair with sauvignon blanc.

I have never been much of a red wine drinker – the headaches aren’t worth it and it turns your teeth grey. But the progression went much as the whites – from bubbly, syrupy Maglieri via merlot to shiraz. I never did grow in to the big (or even the medium) reds – except in a boeuf bourguignon.

These days, a glass of sparkling is just the ticket to kick off Friday night drinks (I had Moët once and was disappointed but I was very taken with Bolly) and a G&T (Bombay Sapphire) is perfect on a summer Saturday. A nice Marlborough sauvignon blanc (like Oyster Bay) is the norm with dinner. A Bailey’s over ice is a terrific nightcap.

My penpal tells me absinthe is quite the experience, though what would possess anyone to drink something green that tastes like liquorice is beyond me – even if it was in the form of something called ‘green fairies’. Perhaps it was novelty value. Apparently, the ritual goes like this:

Put a special flat spoon (with various shaped holes) over the top of your glass. Put a sugar cube on the spoon. Pour your absinthe shot over the sugar. Light the sugar cube. If you get flaming bits of sugar dripping into the glass, that's a green fairy. When the fire goes out, pour cold water over the remainder of sugar cube until it’s melted. The absinthe turns from clear greenish to a honeydew melon cloudy light green. (Chemistry in action.) Add ice cubes and have at it (if you’re feeling brave).

I suppose I can’t bag him out too much. The other night, my son had me try a Flaming something or other – bourbon and apple juice. *Shudder* Let’s just say it was a waste of good apple juice.

Food for thought

I’ve been in my workplace just long enough to scrape in two monthly morning teas. At each event, someone drew three names out of a hat. Those drawn were charged to supply the next morning tea. It’s a bit like the reaping in The Huger Games, really. And, guess what...

Lucky, lucky me.

I get to work with Steve (who says he’s attended one morning tea in the last 12 months) and Paula who calls me Jacinta (not my name) and whose role eludes me.

I have to figure out what to take.

Scary.

These things are always political… Somehow, you have to be impressive without looking like you’re showing off (this puts the giant chocolate gateau off limits).

Fatso pregnancy cookies are also out – I already flashed them round my team in a fit of friend‑making during my first fortnight. And Florentines are gone – the boss has staked her claim in this department and there’ll be no toe‑treading from me.

Meringues are out (women don’t like white powder on their boobs). Party pies and sausage rolls go like hotcakes but even if I make them from scratch (the rolls and pies, not the hotcakes), people might mistake them for the pre-fab variety and then my credibility will be down the toilet.

I’m told slices rock but I haven’t really been a slice girl since making chocolate crunch from the indispensible Central Cookery Book in the late 70s. Someone suggested soup but, really, who has soup for morning tea?

Then there’s the calorific versus diet‑friendly debate – the fruit and sushi platter versus profiteroles and carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

So, how about the humble scone? Bill brought scones last week (his grandfather made them). I'd never tasted a scone that contained coconut before. They were somewhat on the arid side. Jarrod said they were all right with jam on them. They weren't. I suspect it might look a smidge like one-upmanship if I caused a Devonshire tea to materialise. (Though, why one would even bother to demonstrate scone superiority in that circumstance, I don’t know.)

That’s another thing: this morning tea exercise is much easier for blokes. They seem to be able to get away with buying a pack of TimTams/party pies/donuts or having their mother/wife/grandfather cook for them. If they do actually venture into circles culinary, it doesn’t matter that a three-year-old could better their charred pikelets/lame corn relish dip/stale fairy bread because people are just impressed that they gave food preparation a go. Bravo! Little clap for the big man.

On a serious note, I have a handicap (I'm not averse to dredging up childhood deprivation). My mum wasn’t born in Australia, so I didn’t even discover the joys of staples like chocolate ripple cake and jelly slice - let alone prepare them - until well into my thirties. (When we were kids, she thought sending us along to girl guides with French stick slices smeared with John West tuna paste was classy.)

Luckily, I’m also a bloody good cook.

So, as for this wretched morning tea - at this point, I’m fairly committed to taking along my divine (if I do say so myself) spinach pie that looks healthy but only tastes so good because there’s half a kilo of extra tasty in it. Maybe I could balance it out with my sister’s low fat fudge that looks and tastes sinful but won’t trash any diets.

And when I inevitably run over budget, will I pay for the extra ingredients from my own wallet? You bet I will. (God, my ego’s expensive.)
Image: Simon Howden