On The Harvest Road cont.

Picking up from where I left off in the last newsletter…
First stop in Sydney was a lunch at Bathers Pavillion at Balmoral. As originally a Sydney girl it was a lovely taste of my childhood; the smell of the sea, that truly beautiful building and yet again an incredibly friendly, excited group of people with a beautiful meal.
Tuesday back to Melbourne to take my friend Stephanie to lunch for her birthday. And what a beautiful lunch it was at Bistro Vue in Melbourne. Shannon wasn’t there as he was doing a charity dinner in Singapore but his touch was everywhere. It was my first visit there and it was the delight I knew it would be. I started with poached egg on a mushroom puree, with fresh truffle shaved at the table. Then onto a perfectly cooked piece of beef with a béarnaise sauce so unctuous that when I was seen to be spooning the last bit out of the jug, a second jug of the béarnaise appeared, as my pleasure in it was so obvious.
That evening I taught a class at Essential Ingredients in Melbourne - something I realise I’m just too old for as although I love to teach, spending 2 ½ hours talking all the time I found my voice escaped me and my body rebelled.
There were so many extraordinary events during my book tour that it became more than I could stop to write about.
I have never in my life experienced such amazing good will towards what we do, my writing, our products and of course, The Cook and the Chef.
It was really quite overwhelming as I met one person after another who was just so excited. I sometimes had to pinch myself and look around to see who they were talking about, people were so giving.
It was fascinating just how broad an audience I had to speak to - from High Court Judges to Kitchen Hands, and from 3 years old to 93 year olds and every one of them passionate about food.
In Victoria, I had visits to Readings at Hawthorn where the room was packed with so many people standing expectantly on a truly hot evening that I immediately became nervous until I realised how happy they were to be there to talk to me.

Then a wonderful lunch at the Champions at Federation Square where I shared the billing with my friend Kylie Kwong and her truly beautiful book about her journey to her ancestral home. The Big Group catered and did a wonderful job under the watchful eye of Kylie’s head chef Hamish who travelled with her. But it was not only the food; the buzz of the people in the room; every detail of the lunch from the flowers to the staff let alone the lovely food… and the chance to show our new Vanilla Bean and Elderflower Ice Cream - and to hear Kylie talk of her travels, always so inspiring and then of course a long line of signing books. It was such a great day!
Back to Adelaide, where my friend Simon created a beautiful lunch at the Hilton and went to extraordinary trouble to serve my ice cream with dessert. My working with Simon has been such a gift to me.
Then there was the Marion Cultural Centre with well over 300 people in a theatre listening to me. I think I talked a little too long, with hardly any voice, but the warmth of the audience buoyed me as ever.
Next on the list, Tasmania, which gave me the chance to stay with a very special old friend. The very last day of the tour saw queues of people kept coming for 2 whole hours at Fuller’s Bookshop, with young Nick Haddow, the cheese maker, giving tastes of his 3 year old cheese to keep everyone thinking food, food and food.
It’s been the most amazing experience and I wish I’d taken more notes so I could be sure I haven’t missed any of it out…

Foodie Feedback.

The wonderful thing about Maggie's Harvest is that everyone is cooking out of it already. Like every book ever written; particularly every cooking book, issues come up about different recipes given the huge variety of qualities of ingredients and differences in oven temperature. So here, straight from the horse's mouth are 3 things that you, my food club members, can be first to hear.

1. THE LEMON TART
Such a beautiful tart that should finish up like a runny brie but people have had trouble getting it to set. We've now cooked it again 3 different ways in different ovens and using different proprietary ingredients. We found differences in ovens that required cooking times to be as different as 25 to 30 minutes in one to 40 to 45 minutes in another. We found the size of the eggs (we use our own chook eggs who have a huge diet of greens and are super fresh). Then there was the difference in the sourness of the lemons we used and lastly but most importantly was the difference in the acidity of the crème fraiche. One thing I've learnt is that acidity plays havoc with setting of proteins and there is such different levels of acidity in different crème fraiches. So to simplify all that and make the recipe as full proof as I know how - the following will work best:
9 egg yolks (from large fresh free range eggs)
80 ml of very sharp lemon juice
600 mls cream rather than crème fraiche.
I prefer not to chill it to set in the refrigerator as it spoils the pastry.

2. RHUBARB CRUMBLE
We left out the orange juice in the method (an oversight sorry). To be added to the tray of rhubarb before it is baked, to almost ‘steam‘ it.

3. AUNTIE RETA'S CHRISTMAS PUDDING
To make wrapping up such a big pudding easier, it’s best to go more like 65 cm - 70cm square than the 45cm suggested. It’s such a large pudding that it would feed a huge family. It does work halved without problems and if rum is too raw for you, works beautifully with brandy but I was wanting the traditional part of this to exist.

I'm told by a great friend that little differences will pop up everywhere due to these variabilities so I will keep you posted as I find more.