A ramble through sources not sauces, cook book writers, the rise of English and OZ cuisine and The Future.

Cara, this superb repository of gastronomic gladdies as passed down through the generations of McGloin/Kirk families was compiled for your eighteenth birthday in 1995. It started as a manual of culinary survival, your skills in that endeavour being, shall we say, unexplored. The aim was to keep you alive and lively with quick, zesty and inexpensive recipes, such as Great Aunt Thorley's Noodle, Garlic and Ginger soup, straight from exotic Doncaster . Since then I've stumbled off the road as it were, and  added recipes as I've remembered and refined them, some of which may be a few more roubles on the other side of  inexpensive, and a few ticks more than quick and zesty.

Refined is the key word here. Some have been refined from the starter's pistol, as in the Bazza's Shepherd's Pie and Bazza's Bonza Thai Beef Salad, and some have been so refined and developed that the origins cannot be traced. In fact there is no copyright on recipes although where I have changed nothing because the original was so superb, I have acknowledged, for instance the brilliant "Prawns with Mustard Seeds" from that distant branch of our family, the Chakravarty McGloins. The recipe itself may be an original Bengali recipe collected, or perhaps developed by Aunt Rama Chakravarty. It is perhaps pertinent to note that the recipe was published in Madhur Jaffrey's book, "A Taste of India", and that our talented aunt was acknowledged. 

Many recipes in recipe books are of course traditional - Trad. Arr, (traditional arrangement) to use a very popular musical composition credit. The most famous British cookbook, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management which was published in 1861, lists over 200 recipes, a handful of which were her own. In fact she plundered mercilessly, from French, Italian, Spanish and the occasional Brit and set the blueprint for those who followed. Well I say to you, who owns the symphony, the whistler of the tune or the chap who added two hours to it? You know, there was Beethoven walking home from't bus stop in Bury and there was this window cleaner whistling a few notes = and eight symphonies later the maestro remembers....."bloody  'Ell " says Ludvig "that'd make a grand little number, aye, add a few bells and whistles and Gunther's yer uncle".  Culinary symphonies are born likewise, add a bit of this and that and soon the trumpets resound and the original embellished beyond memory. After all, it started with one of our hairy ancestors roasting the kill on the fire. "Daaaaarling, this is haute cuisine. Yummy. That rosemary over the brontosaurus is heavenly, Craig. I'll copywrite it. Now, where's my chisel...." This is merely natural progression, however one should be mindful that simplicity be the principle, purity the aim and enhancement the target.

Madhur Jaffreys is one of the rare breed of great cookery writers; those whose writing style is a pleasure to read, not merely for the recipe information, but for the cultural background which invariably evokes aroma, flavour, history and spirit. Marcella Hazan does the same for Italian cuisine, and Marcella's writing style is also a pleasure to read, evoking an understanding and love of the cuisine and an empathy for the reader. My recipe for Mussel Zuppa Bazza Superba has evolved from Marcella's simpler recipe "Zuppa di Cozze" from "The Classic Italian Cookbook". 

You will have noticed that earlier references to English cookery in the Cokbok are a touch uncomplimentary. Our visit to England and Scotland in 1998 has since modified this opinion, in fact the transported majestic cuisine from the Indian sub continent has ironically elevated the cuisine of the colonisers, although the standard Brit take away food from our observation remains mostly less than inspired. The French saying that the English kill their food twice, firstly when they slaughter it and secondly when they cook it, has some foundation.  Eh bien, other nations would not have commented, but that's the French, killing you with Frankness.

However there appears to be a movement to greater things if the improving standard of English television cookery shows is anything to go by, and you would expect it to impact on the common tastebud sooner or later. It started with Keith Floyd in the late 1980s and 1990s, a chef who presented traditional regional farmhouse cookery with flair, wine and cream, and then wine again. This style of cuisine has always been of a high standard, as is evident from the old cookbooks, in fact some old English banquets were quite ostentatious even by French standards.

If the cookery books are any indication 19^th century English cuisine was surprisingly exotic. Some dishes seem to have gone out of fashion, for instance the stewed plover, pigeon pie, boiled calf's head (with the skin on), roast larks, gosling, leveret, jugged hare, turtle soup and sweetbreads. Then roasted, hashed, boiled, stewed and occasionally fried wheatears, woodcocks, pheasant, peasant, widgeon, pigeon and pintail, tongue, brains and various offal bits and bobs, collared eel, goose and grouse, snipe and teal, pig's feet, boar's head, ortolan, orang-utan, and myriad sweets, sauces, puddings. They liked meat, the ancestors, they were dead keen on it, indeed would kill for it.

Breakfast was modest in Victorian times. Mrs Beeton lists cold meats (whatever the larder could furnish.....) such as collared and potted meats or fish, cold game or poultry, veal and ham pies, broiled [grilled] fish such as mackerel, whiting, herrings, dried haddocks etc, mutton chops and rump steaks, broiled sheep's kidneys, kidneys a la maitre d'hotel, plus your normal fare such as snags, eggs, ham and bacon, marmalade etc.

Cara, one can merely surmise the breakfast repast of our own ancestors, the Chronicles are sadly lost. However, it would not be unreasonable to assume for instance that the Great McGloin or Kirk sat down on special occasions to poached salmon or haunch of venison, if such an ingredient happened by in the course of an early morning constitutional through the Laird's shubbery to the loch. They would certainly not have been remiss when it came to the provision of sustenance or indeed the procurement of a partner for propagation in order that the family name might survive, and we who are here as testament can humbly give our thanks. 

Your (now sadly departed in 2006) Great Uncle Tom often salutes the ancestors in the old tongue after his fourth beverage,  "Intoxicatii te salutant" (those who are about to be challenged by perambulation salute you).  This is usually followed by a discourse on the correct season in which to slaughter the Michaelmas Goose, a discourse he attributes to Horace Bainbridge, the late renowned chef at Wiggins Teape Paper Mill, Dartford . "Aye, Horrie would say that the true period when the goose is in the highest perfection is when it has acquired full growth, and not begun to harden. If the March goose is insipid, the Michaelmas goose is rank". And never a truer word was spoken.

And those present invariably lift their glasses and reply "Aye, Tom, good man yourself" and "Michaelmas Tom, aye" and "never a truer word Tom" and "you’ve got the goose by the gooseberries Tom".

The matriarch McGloin or Kirk would undoubtedly have been aware of her very special position within the family hierarchy. Cara, your Aunt Imogene often likes to emphasise such distinction as follows "Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. The most feminine and domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance. At the tea table she reigns omnipotent, for without her spells the feast would fail to appear. What quaint oddities menfolk are. They may pluck their plovers, collar their eels, fly their trout, goose their goslings and bag their boars, and then quizzically scratch their noddles. They are no better than the quarry. But we love and honour them, so we do. And our pretty and wholesome endeavours will enhance our station and grace our place at the domestic hearthdom, so they will.  'Tis a sad day indeed when womenfolk are deprived of the darling dance at the tea table by a clodfooted male with plover poo on his plimsoles. A woman with a stove in the turret is a princess of the hob, so she is."

I digress. English cuisine seems to have taken an almighty dip in the past 100 years. From cygnet to chops in fact, although chop houses were popular back then. It's probably just as well that young swans fattened for the table have fallen from fashion. However, early cookbooks are perhaps not a reflection of the everyday meals of the household (although this one is), more likely the aspiration of the middle classes to achieve the sophistication of their "betters". The hupper middle cuisine would undoubtedly have differed from the lower middle, which of course bore no resemblance to the swill of the plebs. There was no hupper lower class, the bottom rung had no increments, and indeed, was slippery from goose drippings. They no doubt perused Mrs Beeton to ascertain whether to cook clear soup or perhaps juice it up with a bit of turtle.

Surprisingly the English cookbooks show that recipe ingredients from the 13th century on were quite exotic and varied. Spices from the East such as mace, cumin, cloves, coriander - those we now associate with Indian cuisine were quite common - it seems that the old English in fact liked spicy food. Then something happened and wowserism crept in, Cromwell or Victoria maybe, and if you read Mrs Beeton you might assume that the invaders, Romans and Normans, had forsaken garlic when they crossed the Channel. It appears to have been purposely omitted from her recipes, surprisingly even the Mediterranean ones. She does mention it as the "most acrimonious of the alliaceous tribe, the smell being generally considered offensive" and it was in "greater repute with our ancestors, than it is with ourselves." Even today when it is readily available, there remains almost a suspicion of it, particularly among the older folk, that it may be Napoleon's revenge.  The Nuttalls English Dictionary, of which I have been a proud possessor since my schooldays defines a garlic-eater as a "low fellow", which reminds me of the story that my Dad told of the Norfolk coastal villagers who hung a shipwrecked monkey, thinking it was a Frenchman. Well, it was a low dark fellow, ugly, spoke gibberish and kept looking at the women.  Surprisingly, following the garlic comment Mrs Beeton provides a recipe for chilli vinegar which uses 50 fresh English chillies!!!  What the deuce is an English chilli? A cold breeze???

Back to cooking shows and the creeping public awareness of a world beyond bangers and mash. Keith Floyd's later shows investigated Asian, North American and European cuisines, which must have shifted the common perception away from the Fanny Craddock School of Cookery, and further enlightened the masses. Also the younger Brits were starting to travel "abroad", and not merely to enclaves of British in Majorca where proper safe Britfood could be eaten instead of the Spanish stuff, and where you needn't even parlay with the foreigners if you didn't want to - home away from home, with sun and chip butties. Younger Brits, (well some of them) with their newfound yuppiedom were experiencing epicurean cultural diversity.

The Two Fat Ladies followed Floyd, about mid 90s I think, and their mixture of eccentric, imperious with a whiff of bohemian style was appealing. Their total disdain of fat reduced novelle cuisine, and the health conscious lifestyle in favour of slabs of super fat cheeses, barrels of beurre and kegs of clotted crème was flying in the face of medical opinion, and also heartwarming for most of the audience who didn't eat as much fat as that, and those ladies were undoubtedly very much alive. Jennifer will always be remembered for her cigarette and wine at the summing up. The amply proportioned ladies did not stick to Brit cuisine, drawing on recipes from Slavic, Romanian, Asian and Middle Eastern among others.

The effervescent West Indian cook,             , with her retiring but obedient partner         , opened the exotica of that cuisine to the Brits - the benefit of multi culturalism in action. Rick Styne who owns a restaurant in Padstow presented adventures in seafood which embraced other cuisines, emphasing fresh ingredients and quick cooking methods.  Then Jamie Oliver, the talented enthusiastic, and some might say brash Essex lad hit the screens; this was modern streetwise culturally aware Brit youth in action.

This lad is a gem to watch and listen to. No toffy nosed accent here - straight Essex/London with luvely jubbley unpretentious articulation - "wot I wanna do is give it some poke, toss in the coriander and smash it up, easy peezy, a village idiot could do it".  Despite his youth and streetspeak the depth of his culinary education is evident, but what makes Jamie unusual is that he is enthused about the recipe and excited about creating; his recipes are inventive and he is not afraid to mix ingredients from different cultures to obtain effect.

Jamie was in Oz last year and spoke highly of the modern Oz chefs who are also innovative and recognise no boundaries, using bush ingredients together with Asian or European styles to create exciting dishes with flair.  He employs Oz chefs at his restaurant. A two page Sydney Morning Herald article recently referred to the demand for Oz chefs in London , in fact one who had transplanted his Sydney restaurant to London was judged 3 silver spoons in the Michelin. We've come a long way in a relatively short time.

In the sixties the effects of migration on the Aussie cuisine was not evident, except perhaps in small enclaves of the capital cities or in the Cooma district where many migrants were employed on the Snowy River Hydro Project. In fact Aussies didn’t really countenance displays of cultural diversity. "New Australians" were "encouraged" to speak English at the least, and those who came from English speaking countries were open to "encouragement" until they "strined" their accent. The "wog" weekend picnics were open to ridicule and sometimes abuse; small wonder then that migrants formed suburban citadels. The Italians settled in Leichhardt in Sydney and Carlton in Melbourne, the Greeks in Marrickville and Fitzroy, the Lebanese in Lakemba, Jews in Strathfield and Toorak.  Such suburbs are now wealthy and the cultural benefit is evident in the richness of diversity, particularly in the variety of our cuisine. 

The Chinese have been here since the goldrush days. They came in tens of thousands, making their way to Ballarat, Bendigo , Beechworth. A few thousand on their way to Ballarat discovered gold and founded a town in Victoria called Ararat, but mostly they scattered everywhere, and a Chinese restaurant could be found in most country towns.

Cara, my first introduction to "cuisine" was not, as you would naturally assume, through your Nanna McGloin's cooking. You know that after Dad died she refused to cook for anyone and she has maintained the rage since. Who said the world is a safer place for it? Not me, I've always maintained that Nanna's cooking was designed to keep us alive mostly, although her lemon meringue pie was something to die for, but the recipe is her secret, well one of them. She has lots, and won't tell, unless you provide a chardonnay, and even then she;ll make them up. She keeps them close, if she tells she's a goner. Yup her secrets keep her alive.

She told me that the famed lemon meringue pie was a packet job. Of course I didn't believe her, having crowed about it to Denise for years. So, I've gone in search of the recipe - test driven hundreds in fact, and have come up with the closest approximation which is now part of your collection.

In the mid 1960s, following one of our band practices, and subsequent L&E (libation and evaluation) exercise at the Bridge Hotel, drummer John McGrath introduced me to the delights of Chinese short soup and long "combination" soup at Leongs in Nowra.  The unique flavour was a revelation. The next milestone was Indian food at Kings Cross, then pizza and Italian veal and seafood in Leichhardt in the early 1970s, and Lebanese and Greek cuisine in Cleveland St Surry Hills in the mid 70s and Slavic food in Flemington, just down the road from Imogene and Rory's flat.

In the seventies we cooked Spag Bol, fondues ( which derived from the Swiss I think - a pot of melted cheese in which you dipped thinly sliced meat to cook then dipped it a dipping sauce - a leisurely meal ) the Steak Dianne, the Chook in the Basket, the Beef Wello, veal or chook cordon blue, innumerable unmentionable casseroles, chops mash and veg - bet they still serve them at Chopper's 70's style pub. The Spag Bol was a favourite then and remains a favourite surprisingly - Jamie loves it. So I've included the best version I could find, which is of course the famous Yorky Beasley's Spaghetti Bolanaise. 

In the early 80s Denise, you and I went to a Vietnamese café in Bankstown and had a couple of large pho (noodle) soups - the first time we'd tasted fresh coriander, fish sauce and the wonderful balance of flavours; we must have been among the first Sydneysiders to try them. Vietnamese and Thai cuisine became popular and now we have embraced all sorts of esoteric (for us anyway) obscure regional Asian cookery like the Straits restaurant where we dined in Richmond Vic. which was a combination of Chinese, Burmese and Indian. Now we have regional European, Asian and African restaurants popping up and down like mushrooms, it's a Global Village banquet, a feast of exploding flavours, light years from the Battered Sav. Rejoice !!