Sweet, sweeeet pizza

If you really had any doubts about it, I’ll put it to rest now (See “Spaghetti Confession”). No, I’ve not made a dessert pizza. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even eaten any dessert pizza.

 

Well, my client is demonstrating how to make dessert pizza at her store this week, so I had to produce a leaflet detailing dessert pizza recipes. My client had a dessert pizza somewhere, once, and wanted to replicate it. She described it to me and left me with the job of translating it into a recipe. This is basically what she told me she would make: a banana caramel pizza. And she wants to make it by using ready made mini-pizza bases. Spread caramel on the base, then top with banana slices and pieces of chocolate, and then bake until the chocolate melts. I have to admit, this sounds really quite heavenly. Is your mouth watering yet?

 

I struggled with the technicalities of quantities and timing – writing a recipe really isn’t that easy – and then when I tried to find a royalty-free photo of the internet of something that looks like a banana caramel pizza, well, there was none to be had. And let me tell you, trawling through hundreds of photos of ‘banana caramel’ dishes can make you have a dire hankering for some the stuff. Anyway, the upshot is, I came up with this recipe and if you would like to make it and tell me how it turns out, and even better, take a photo of it – please do, and send it to me!

 

Banana Caramel Pizza

 

Ingredients:

 

4 mini pizza bases (about 5-6 inch/13 – 15cm)

8 tablespoons Nestle tinned caramel

4 small, ripe bananas, sliced

300g couverture (or any good quality) milk or dark chocolate, chopped to 1cm chunks

4 scoops vanilla bean ice-cream

Caramel sauce/topping

 

Method:

 

Heat oven to 180 degrees

Bake pizza bases in oven for 8 minutes

Remove pizza bases and allow to cool slightly

Spread 2 tablespoons of caramel on each pizza base

Arrange banana slices on top of the caramel

Scatter chocolate chunks over the banana slices

Bake in oven for 6-8 minutes, or until chocolate appears soft and glossy

Remove and top with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream

Drizzle caramel sauce over and serve immediately

 

 

So I wrote this up on the leaflet, and it looked really quite forlorn there on its own, with no photo to jazz up the page. So I figured I really should include another recipe, so this is what I came up with. I’d seriously love some feedback on this one as well.

 

Apple Frangipane Pizza

 

Ingredients:

 

4 mini pizza bases (about 5-6 inch/13 – 15cm)

1 cup almond meal

4 tablespoons butter, softened

1/4 cup icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 can pie apple

3 tbs ground Dutch cinnamon

8 tablespoons golden demerara sugar

4 scoops vanilla bean ice-cream

4 tbs golden syrup

 

Method:

 

Heat oven to 180 degrees

Bake pizza bases for 8 minutes

Meanwhile, combine the almond meal, butter, icing sugar and vanilla.

Allow pizza to cool slightly, then spread the almond mixture on the bases

Arrange slices of pie apple on top of the almond mixture

Dust cinnamon over the apple

Sprinkle with demerara sugar

Bake in oven for 6-8 minutes

Top hot pizzas with ice-cream and quickly drizzle golden syrup over to finish

 

Tell me how you ‘fare’ with the timing and quantities, and if the instructions make sense. Send me pics if you like!

Spaghetti Confession

 

 

My client had declared February to be ‘Italian month’ at her store. She planned to give classes on Italian themes, such as making fresh pasta, gnocchi, ravioli, various pasta sauces and finally, dessert pizza. And so these were the topics of my writing assignments for the month.

 

It was quite an enjoyable process – I couldn’t believe there was so much to know about making fresh pasta. Which I suppose shouldn’t have surprised me, now that I really think about it, because in spite of writing as if I knew everything there was to know about making pasta – the dark, grim truth of it is that I have never, ever made fresh pasta. Now when my dear friend Dave discovered this, he was quite concerned and murmured something about my being a ‘fraud’. So in a brave attempt to rescue me from my terrible fraudulent state, he plied me with his very own pasta machine, complete a whole new, unopened packet of dopio (Italian ‘00’ flour, a MUST for making pasta) flour.

 

Sadly, I remain just that – a fraud. Because each time I think of making fresh pasta, I think of a hundred other reasons not too. Apart from knowing that the weather has to be not so humid, that there shouldn’t be a draught in the kitchen, and I must let the dough rest for an hour, before I begin putting it through the machine, and then I must cook it either straightaway, or dry it or freeze it – I usually also have at least one packed of dried pasta in my pantry.

 

And if you must know – yes, quite frankly I’d hate to make an attempt and end up with a gloop of sticky fetuccine (Dave tells me that’s how his machine makes pasta) and feel like an even bigger fraud. And – really, truly and honestly, I just haven’t got time!

 

While we’re at it, I’ll add here that I’ve not made gnocchi or ravioli, either. But I do know how to write about them! Guess that’s why I’m a writer, not a cook.

Workplace Injury

Last Friday, as I was hanging out laundry items to dry, I felt a spasm in my lower pack. Moments later I was completely unable to walk without a great deal of pain. I was reduced to shuffling around rather than walking, and had to quickly decide what activities I had to cancel for the day. Some writing would probably be quite manageable. I had planned to shop for and cook dinner for a dear friend, on the occasion of her birthday. I tried to picture pushing a trolley, picking up a joint of pork, placing it in the oven to roast. No, there was no way I would be able to perform any of those tasks.

 

I sat at the computer and wrote steadily about ravioli when my back began to ache in earnest, and it was then that I realized that my back problems were caused by my sitting on a $20 fold-up chair, with my torso just ever so slightly twisted so that my hand could grasp the mouse – there is no room on our small computer desk for a keyboard and a mouse pad, so the mouse is manipulated on the far side of the little desk. And I was also slouching as is my wont, and leaning on the desk. Twisted, leaning, reaching, for hours on end, in the past month. My lumbar region was pinching extra painfully as I pushed the mouse around. There was no doubt about it. This was a workplace injury.

 

Clearly I need to speak to my boss about this. She has not provided me with a proper office chair on which to work. She tells me she’s been waiting for her ABN, after which she will invoice her client, and upon receiving remittance she will happily purchase a good office chair for my use.

 

Well, she’s had to pay more for chiropractic fees than for the chair she has since purchased. These things are here to bug bosses, no doubt about it.

 

Postscript: A week on and my back is all good again. Chiropractors rock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But…I’ve been writing!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve actually been busy – wait for it – writing! I ‘ve had a fair bit of work to do and it will be regular for a while, I expect. I hope to be able to do some of the work a little quicker and look at writing other food articles to try and sell.

There have been some incredibly wonderful blessings on the way. My client requested that I do some desktop publishing (newsletters) for her as well as copywriting. So that means more work, and also more opportunity to use my creativity.

That same week, I was given some desktop publishing software, without which I would struggle to produce these newsletters. Thanks, Ames. And then another friend, out of the blue, offered to lend me her laptop on a long term basis (Thanks, Tammy!). And I received in the mail, that same week, a 1gb pen drive, which admittedly does not cost much these days, but it saved me from still having to buy one, anyway (Thanks, Bek!). So – I was pretty much set. I took myself off to the library that week, feeling like a ‘real’ writer.

Still haven’t summoned the courage to e-mail Erich Van Alphen, which is pretty poor effort – he’ll have forgotten me by now. But i WILL do it on Wednesday.

Thanks for your support and the comments I’ve been receiving here and via e-mail. This journey was terrifying at the start, but seems to have settled down now. I have no idea how long it will last, given the current economic climate and the exceptional qualities of my client – I’ll take each day as it comes.

A little about food:

I’ve been writing about pasta, and learned from the great Giorgio Locatelli (who wrote the most amazing book you’ll ever find on Italian food) that Italians don’t eat spaghetti Bolognese  because it’s the wrong type of sauce for spaghetti. A heavy meat sauce like ‘Bog’ is good with penne, gnocchi and other short pasta shapes. Spaghetti and other long pasta is good with lighter sauces using oil or perhaps just a plain tomato sauce. Giorgio tells us that spag and bog don’t go together because you’ll finish the pasta and leave a pool of meat sauce behind – and a good pasta dish should incorporate the sauce and the pasta perfectly. Go read his book. It’s amazing.

The other thing I’ve learned about food in this past week is this: If you’re at a yum cha restaurant and you’ve just shocked the waiter because you’ve had to ask for 8 forks to use in place of chopsticks, slap yourself on the face and leave immediately. I was foolish and stayed and tried to help my 8 uninitiated friends enjoy yum cha and it was a total, unmitigated disaster. I spent today trying to remember another occasion where I was more mortified/embarrassed/really, really, offended and I can’t remember anything that comes close! Ah well, hopefully it means one day I’ll either forget about it or have a good laugh when I think about it. Perhaps then I’ll be able to post a funny version of it…!

French Twist

Last weekend, I managed to swing myself a little rendezvouz that got my heart racing. On Friday, my dear friend Amy rang and asked me if I’d like to attend the Ginger Fest at Yandina with her. She mentioned cooking demonstrations, and said something about Erich Van Alphen. A light went on at the back of my head. I think he owns the French restaurant at Woombye, I said. Yes, she confirms. He’s on at 11am. I decide to put my cooking demonstration prejudice aside  and told her I’d meet her there. (my cooking demonstration prejudice stems from listening to too many cooks mangle the names of  Asian ingredients. Worst culprit: Iain Hewitson… but don’t get me started…) I’d met Erich once, and we had had an amazing discussion about food. Maybe I could try and talk to him again, and steer the conversation towards some collaborative work. Or something. Or anything, really. 

I almost gave it a miss because Ames had to pull out.  But inspiration came from a rather unexpected source (Joel!), who suggested that I could intervew Erich and write about my encounter with him. I decided that that suggestion had plenty of merit, so hopped out of bed with just enough time to make to Yandina by 11.

The Ginger Fest featured a whole lot of things I don’t enjoy about the Coast: lots of heat, lots of humidity, lots of tourists, lots of souveniers and not enough parking. But all this was forgotten from the moment Erich started cooking. I was mesmerised. I could have sat all day in that stuffy room with surrounded by all these snap happy tourists. They were drooling at his cooking. Me, I was spellbound by his words.

I don’t need a recipe, he tells us, expertly pouring out quantities of flour, butter and milk for crepes. I cook from the heart, he adds simply, with no bluster. He stirred, he poured, he sizzled, he chopped, all the while feeding the audience little morsels of cooking tips, a la Francaise. When time comes to flambe the dessert, more than just the crepes suzette get set aflame. We were all eating out of his hand.

Somewhere in the middle of his demonstration, he tells us that he used to own The French Room at Woombye. My heart plummets. What on earth am I going to interview him about, if he doesn’t have the restaurant anymore? But then he talks about other exciting things, like a cooking school for chefs. A new, million-dollar restaurant. Teaching at TAFE, and at the Ginger Factory Cooking School. Will I find something here I can speak coherently about? Or will I melt into a puddle of gush? ( ”I love your food! Squeal! Can you autograph my spatula?”)

At the end of the class, there is a stampede. Men, women, children, all wanting a taste of his crepes. I hold back, my stomach in knots. After that, the agonizing wait. I am a bundle of nerves, my heart racing. I watched him clean up, smile and field questions. I pull faces inwardly, grimacing at myself. This is freelance writing? Oh joy!

After perhaps the longest 10 minutes of my life, he emerges. I feel my face creasing into a stupid, stupid smile and I begin. He is kind; he stops and watches me rave. And then he smiles, and he nods, and then – we talk. About food, about eating, about food, about writing, restaurants, cooking schools, the economic downturn, about ingredients, about a cookbook (I die!), and, finally, about me, working with him. He pats his pockets and says, I have no business cards. I gush reassuringly and tell him that oh, I haven’t got any, either! He forgives my apparent stupidity and lack of preparation and gives me his email address. Write to me, he says. Tell me your story, and we’ll work something out.

And. My. Heart. Stops.

It hasn’t quite started up enough yet to get me writing that e-mail to him. But I will, and soon, and you’ll just have to come back for another bite of French twist to find out what happens.

Biting the hand

Just to fill you in on a bit of background to the whole bitter pill episode (it also tells a bit about how I got to start freelancing, actually). For about 2 years now, I’ve been employed by woman who runs a cooking school from her kitchenware store/café. I worked in the kitchenware store for a few months, and thereafter worked from home as her in-house researcher/writer. It was a bit job, averaging perhaps 4 hours a month, and I was paid retail rates for writing work. But I was happy to do it because I got to work from home, and I got to write about food.

 

When I started the freelancing business at the start of this year, it was partly because I figured that my boss had already had as many cooking class topics as she needed (I’ve written around 20 different topics for her classes), and wouldn’t have anymore work for me. So the last thing in the world I expected was to have her ring me at the start of last week, just days after I start the freelancing business, asking me to help her re-write materials her cooking classes.

 

I half expected that she wanted me to help her  “re-write” more of the work that I had already done for her, so she could submit it under her name to this magazine that she contributes to. I gathered that she was under a fair bit of stress and needed some writing done, and obviously had little or no time to do it in. I agreed to head in and see her at her store.

 

When I got off the phone, I wondered briefly if I should simply continue to write for her under her employ (I was still technically employed by her on a casual basis). But I decided that that would be silly, and I should be brave enough to tell her that I’m now freelancing, and if she wanted me to write for her then she needs to pay me my freelance rate. And while I was there, I decided I would also ask her to acknowledge that I was the one who wrote the ‘The Art of High Tea’ that was credited to her in the magazine.

 

I spent a fair bit of time praying very, very earnestly before the meeting. I was worried that she would refuse to pay my freelance hourly rate, and I was petrified of making the request that she acknowledge that I wrote “High Tea”. More than anything else, I wanted to trust God with whatever the outcome would be.

 

Immediately when the meeting began, I told her that I now freelance. She asked as to what my business name was, then asked who my other customers were (it occurred to me later that she probably thought I decided to ‘freelance’ to get a higher hourly rate from her, and probed to find out how genuine this whole new business was!). But she seemed to accept my fee and we spent a bit of time discussing her new class format and what she needed me to do. To cut a long story short, she has decided to run new classes every week from mid Feb onwards, and commissioned me to write booklets for each class. So. Not only do I have a client for my new baby business, but it is steady work for at least the next few months, if not the rest of the year. I was happy and excited.

 

The meeting looked like it was just about over and I still hadn’t had the opportunity to bring up her submitting my article to the magazine under her name. I had just decided to leave it for now especially since she’d given me so much work to do, when suddenly she mentioned ‘the magazine’. I immediately offered to write any future articles for her, for the magazine, and she nodded willingly and said they only wanted 300 words. I then said that the by-lines had to be under my name (by-line is the one that gives credit to the author of the article, as in “Written By….”), and she said that no, she can’t have someone else’s name on it, that it has to be written by her. We discussed the copyright issue a bit and I think I’ve just got her thinking she needs to be more careful about it. But that was as far as it got.

 

So, on the whole, I wasn’t going to push the issue, as she has commissioned quite a bit of work, and it will be work that is interesting and a pleasure to write. I do wonder though, as I write for her now, if the words that I craft will one day be published under her name – again. But I guess that beggars can’t be choosers, and beggars also had better not bite the hand that feeds – so I’ll just keep that bitter pill down, keep my nose to the grindstone and keep an eye out for bigger dish to fry. At the end of the day, I’m a new freelance business with a client who is offering steady work. It’s a lot more than I could have asked for. I need to see the plagiarism as a minor issue, keep working and trusting God that he’ll work things out for the best.

 

Sorry about the spate of clichés at the end, it’s late and I’ve had an enormous day. Thanks for coming by. Drop me a note, I’d love to hear from you.

 

 

A bitter pill

I’m not sure what life-lesson I’m supposed to learn from this. Perhaps you might like to leave me a suggestion or two. You see, I am as yet an unpublished writer. There is, however, a piece of my writing that has appeared in print. The woman who employed me to write booklets for her cooking classes has submitted my work (edited to fit her word limit) to a magazine, which has published the article under her name.

I’ve only done it perhaps twice, but each time I read through the printed article, I taste ashes in my mouth. Right there, in print, are words crafted by me. And right next to it, my ex-boss’s face, her face creased into beguiling smile and the name of her business and her own name, printed at the top of the page. How do I explain it? It’s like kicking a winning goal and having everyone congratulating someone else for doing it.

So. I’m going to claim it back, right here, right now. Below are some of my favourite bits from the booklet. I don’t know how to right this wrong, as I have requested acknowledgement and she has refused. So I leave it in the hands of God.

This was written for a cooking class entitled “The Art of High Tea”. It is, sadly enough, one of my favourite pieces.

The Art of High Tea

It is without a doubt that the words ‘high tea’ conjure up images of tiered cakestands, resplendent with delicate but devastatingly rich little cakes and other sweet treats, to be taken with tea sipped from fine bone teacups. There will be an air of rarefied gentility with much conversation and laughter. It’s probably the closest thing we 21^st century women have to ancient female rites, as high teas are invariably a girls-only affair. Somehow we know that ‘high tea’ will involve maximum indulgence on the part-takers, a chance to really take our ease – little wonder then that those who make demands on us (ie men and children!) are packed off to other more suitable activities for the afternoon!

High teas are a fairly recent Australian trend. It is not to be confused with our ‘afternoon teas’, during which a mug of coffee or tea together with a biscuit or two are snatched in between school runs or during an office lull. High teas are decidedly uppercrust, and have been successfully marketed by hotels as such.

High tea is a special occasion event that usually takes place at luxury hotel restaurants-indeed it is thanks to these hotels that we have ‘high tea’ as we know it today. It is quite ironic, given that the term high tea was first used amongst the lower class British, who would have their ‘high tea’ as their evening meal, consisting of hearty staples such as sausage, bread and cheese, following a hard day of labour. High tea is still understood, in England today, to be a meal consisting of mostly savoury and somewhat hearty dishes.

Afternoon tea on the other hand is an English institution at such hotels as the Ritz and the Dorchester in London, and it is from these hotels that we have inherited our ‘high teas’. Some writers have remarked that ‘afternoon teas’ are now the domain of tourists and the remnants of an older generation who took afternoon tea everyday without fail. Our cyberspace-age generation simply lack the time and inclination to stop in the middle of the afternoon for a meal that a vending machine can provide for a fraction of price, time – and taste, in all nuances of that last.

What, exactly, constitutes high tea? The Ritz and Dorchester afternoon tea menus offer a selection of sandwiches, scones in one form or another, and something sweet, such as a pastry or two, or some cake. There is always an excellent selection of loose leaf teas, and there is of course, the option of having coffee instead. The portions are not large. Indeed, for all the grandiose air of the tiered cakestands, this is really meant to be a snack, not a full meal in itself. Accordingly, one ends up with a finger sandwich or two, a scone with jam and cream, and a tiny piece of pastry or cake to finish. That pretty much sums up the traditional English afternoon tea. A relatively new trend is to offer a champagne afternoon tea, which is simply the addition of a glass of champagne to the above menu.

 

Mangoes past Midnight

I discovered that the very best time to eat mangoes is to have them well past midnight. This came about late, late last Sunday, when I was awake into the wee hours, not obsessing about writing. I was getting peckish, so I thought I would go and get a snack. Of two mangoes. (And write, since I was up, anway. Just an idea or two. Hardly obsessing, really).

The mango that I had chosen to begin with was overripe and had lost some of its firmness. Inverting my criss-crossed mango cheek, I had in my hand an inviting mound of bright yellow diamonds. I found that all it took was a firm lick to lift a diamond of cold, sweet mango into my mouth. I tasted summer in an instant; then honey, and a hint of pineapple. Each mouthful finished with a slightly bitter end, a perfect foil to counter the ripe sweetness at the start. Each mouthful tasted just ever so slightly different, each a new discovery.

This is the kind of eating that you concentrate on. This is the kind of eating that you share with no one. This is why you need to eat mangoes at midnght – when the world beyond your kitchen light is shrouded in darkness, when all the other inhabitants of the house are sleeping softly. You know as you lift up a piece of mango to begin your feast, that no one will interrupt you. There will be no requests for milk-in-a-bottle-please-mummy, no having to tell anyone that the mayonaise-is-in-the-middle-shelf-in-the-fridge-behind-the milk-and-next-to-the-bread. There will be no Nokia tunes to announce the arrival of an SMS. Nothing. It will be just you and the mango, softly, softly in the night.

The best laid plans of mice and mums (with apologies to Robert Burns and John Steinbeck)

“The best- laid schemes o’ mice an’ men; Gang aft a-gley”

So wrote Scots poet Robert Burns in his poem “To A Mouse”. John Steinbeck later wrote his novella “Of Mice and Men” to echo the theme: The best laid plans of mice and men/Oft go awry.

All this to make the excuse that with a 2-year old in tow, one’s best intentions will often go ‘awry’, and that includes updating one’s blog daily.

It also occurs to me that it’s completely pointless to make and present long-winded excuses (even ones littered with literary references) each time I fail to blog daily. So this will be the last one. Thanks for staying with me. On the next entry, there will be food there, I promise.

Even keel

This morning I was graciously given time and space to reflect on what happened last night. Too late I realised that while I was with Missy during the week, my mind would be on writing. And every spare minute I had to myself was spent reading, thinking, planning, worrying. I was determined to work hard, but never stopped to think that this was to be a job, that I had to leave it at some point during the day and ‘go home’. And that time had to be spent resting and thinking about other equally, if not more, important things in life.

So, no more obsessing. Work, yes, obsess, no. I will strive for balance, and will anchor myself on my faith.