on the shelf

There are lots of little things that you meet along your eatings that just slightly alter the way you know food and the tools you use to think about it.  I suppose this is what I was referring to when I talked in my last post about ‘elevating your game’, but it’s not just your ability to create with food that is elevated – it is your inner sense of what it means, your ways of talking about it, of filling out the space it can prospectively occupy in your life.

I’ve never made something for more than 10 people at a time.  A project like that, of course, is gratifying, especially when you know all of them and you can see the way it affects them.  Last week I moved out of my sort of private sphere of edible influence and into something a little bigger than myself and my friends.  So now people might be eating things I’ve made at their desks with their tea or at the table with their oldest friend or maybe if they’re like me they’ve scavenged something special they will share with a very particular person and at the time that it’s shared all of their attention will be on it.  That, of course, is a grandiose way to think about it, and I’m also feeding gingerbread to children who are only ‘hungry for biscuits’ and any biscuit will do, and a whole bunch of other slightly less calculated needs-based transactions.  But just having the option to feed someone something without the silly formality of having to know them first is, for this moment, a bit of a rush.

Last week I put some things on this shelf, and was a big enough douchebag to then go back and take photos of it:

Things were pretty much all good and no disasters.  I hesitated to tell many people about this job until I was sure I would still have it after the first day.  There is some part of me which does lack confidence in something I know I can do because I have no ‘credentials’ or place in ‘the industry’ or any of that rubbish.  I think there is some element of my perception of this general ‘scene’ built around the cafes in the northern suburbs, which align with my perception of the art scene in Melbourne, which is that it’s primarily a matter of networking and that your craft and passion and integrity is a secondary element.  Then again, what the fuck do I know?  But there’s also just the part of me that steps inchoate into anything which brings my heart out of its private place in my chest and sits it, uncaged, in some sense of ‘public’.  Pride and fear and all that shit.

Thankfully, I’m somewhere where I like the people I am feeding, I like the space in which I’m feeding them, and I like the process of creation.  There’s a fair bit of slowmance in it all.  I’m making my own apple juice for spelt blueberry muffins and grinding my own clove for pumpkin pinwheel.  There’s an appreciation for backyard produce and for imperfect, even downright munted expressions on the faces of bite-a-koalas.  Well, it’s permitted, if not appreciated.  The kitchen doesn’t feel terribly unlike my own, and that seems affirming.

And so there are some new foodscapes, and therefore some ideas about how to read and navigate them.  I’m thinking about roles in urban food chains and about mobile food units (MFUs) and about the recipe as a piece of intellectual property and the matter of accessibility and how many delicious things are easily vegan and liberated from the gluten regime and more and more about the relationships built around food.  Like the ones I already have, and how I can bring some of them to Each Peach and make them try something they’ve already had and love it again in a different place.  Here’s a slice of pumpkin roll, and the way it can be finished so perfectly for the picture.

the merits of mindful extravagance

Alright, so.  I’ve sunken into a diet depression and have come out on the other side, which should account for the void here.  I’ve really never experienced anything like this before and have always had the luxury of reasonable proximity to most of the foods I crave.  So I’ve mostly just been coping.  I believe that my lowest point was when I tried a dahl at a different Indian takeaway, opened the container to find that it was made with much tomato, and ended up crying.  But not til after I went out and bought the safe dahl from Singh’s, and some coconut chutney (which they say doesn’t have chili, but I don’t believe them) and gave the tomato dahl to my concerned boyfriend, who was then asked to leave.   Since then things have mostly felt better.

I think one of the upswings was this Strawberry Custard tart recipe, which reminded me that it is quite possible to do this indulgently (though it may take about 4 hours).  I have developed, quite extensively, a sensualist relationship with the food that I eat.  I dive into those flavours which are rich and peculiar and old and complex.  I am a junkie for the experience of digging into a layered or gradated sensory experience, and then for discussing it immediately after (and sometimes during).  And I suppose the charge I get from that has become quite sustainaing, energising, with a degree of sustenance that I can’t ignore or discount.  It’s a part of the way that I eat, something I’ve shared with so many people, and I think I’ve decided that it’s something I want to continue to integrate into future food philosophies.  (If any vocab kids out there have a word for ‘way of eating in a particular age’ – something along the lines of ‘culinary zeitgeist’ but much more humble – hit me.  I’ll give you credit and, if you’re local or easily reached by domestic post, I’ll bake you something.)  I think the food that I cook for others has taken on this quality because I want to give that experience to other people.  I want them to be tasting a first bite for a long minute.  And so, when this came along, there was much rejoicing.

First of all, holy fucking shit: vegan custard.  With no rubbish in it.  No refined sugar, no gluten – just maccas and vanilla and my first dealings with agar agar powder.  And this entire recipe is easily liberated from gluten – a coarse buckwheat flour, some rolled rice (though I’m told that’ll need a bit of soaking beforehand to soften things up, not so much for your tummy as for your teeth), and you have a vegan, gluten-free, decadent, earthy dessert that’s got no refined sugar and also did I mention fucking good vegan custard.

also, sex appeal.

I think I loves this lady a little.  She may very well be a tool for survival.  She is on top of her game.

Speaking of which, I do feel that this situation is serving to elevate my cooking / baking game, which is another thing that is preventing me from booting it.  I can’t walk away from things like that, and I start to enjoy the engagement of that challenge and the way it keeps me thinking and aware of what I’m doing (ingesting).  It feels a little like how it feels to open up a romantic relationship.  You wanna keep at it because you just keep getting better at it.

Another little stumbleupon that is sure to test me is a new baking project.  Once a week I’ll be baking at Each Peach, a local cafe that I’ve been crushing on for months now.  This is the closest northern-suburbs thing to what I would do myself if I were so lucky – totally homespun and handmade and so totally at someone’s house.  I’ll be using their recipes and bringing in some of my own, and I’m also being called upon to do some veganising.  When I bake for myself it’s rarely vegan, but there are lots of good ways to veganise, and lots of good reasons as well.  I love making superspecial treats accessible and I don’t subscribe to the idea that the obnoxiousness often associated with vegan politics (whether or not it’s a suitable stereotype) should preclude those folks from feasting lusciously.  Unless they’re also straightedge.  Then they’re clearly not interested in indulgence.  I’ve no time for that.