Re-saucing the budget

In light of the weekend of indignation experienced across the globe, I thought I would share a couple of strategies which helped me cut kitchen costs during my student years.


Fortunately for me, living in Australia made student life easier than in most other countries. Centrelink ensured I had enough bacon on the table to last me till Hanukkah, but it certainly helped to be fiscally conservative in the kitchen, while being alcoholically liberal outside it.


Some financial facilitators were quite well known across the cheapskate community, like the closing time sales. Following suit from markets places around the world, Woolies regularly discounted their perishable items 5-10 minutes before closing time. This meant you could pick up a loaf of bread and 500grams of mince for a total of $1 (about $1.45 in A$2011). I'm sure other perishables were also discounted, but once my trolley had meat and carbos, I hardly saw the point in sticking around. When the butcher didn't feel like handing out student aid, I often resorted to 1kg packets of no-frills-branded frozen burger patties, which went for about the same price. This was the beginning of my on-again off-again love affair with frozen foods. Together with rice, 2-minute noodles and the occasional pizza run, these made up the majority of my dietary intake.


Over the years, to the amazement of some, I stopped 'attending' Woolies at 8.55pm. Although I still look for bargains and sale stickers, I eventually started paying full price for meat. There is, however, one habit I picked up which took much longer to let go of. Until my mid-twenties, my cooking was characterised mostly by the lack of effort and dollars spent on it. These two features of my 'cooking' helped me develop sauce-infused pasta.


This simple but effective method diminished work and cost by more than 50%. Pasta (be it spaghetti, penne, tagliatelle, etc), being the cheaper and less arduous half of the meal, as well as possibly the most filling, is too boring by itself. The sauce, higher in nutritional value and flavour, is not only time consuming and messy, but also the most expensive part of the meal. When producing a dish, there is an ultimate ratio of pasta to sauce. Attempting to lower costs and effort, one is tempted to meddle with this ratio, but to no avail. As expected, increasing the pasta to sauce ratio (therefore decreasing cost and effort) renders the dish an insult to the entire Italian community. The ratio is not to be messed with.


As the experimenting continued, however, I found the right strategy to achieve my goals: eat the pasta, taste the sauce. After serving myself the perfectly ratio-ed dish, one where the sauce covers the noodles without drowning them, I proceeded to only eat the pasta, and leave the sauce behind. My visual and olfactory senses were tricked into believing I was consuming a full-flavoured meal, while my taste buds questioned the deceitful nature with which my student budget and lazy nature conspired against them. Once I ate the noodles, being the eternally growing lad that I am, I would refill my bowl with more pasta, recycling the sauce from my first serving. I now recognise these to be my first steps towards sustainable cooking, decreasing my meat intake from a wealthy Argentine to a middle class Italian in just under 10 years.


I have not run the figures, but I suspect this nifty strategy also saved me from washing hundreds of saucepans, and making many unnecessary late night market runs.


Seeing as it is a culture non-specific strategy, able to support stir-fries, curries, tagines and other carb-heavy dishes, I think perhaps I should float it by Centrelink's multicultural division, and run a course on re-saucification. But if Centrelink doesn't buy that, perhaps we could still push for the provision of simple budgeting training and services to be provided to those receiving benefits. Living within means can be tricky no matter what the budget is, but perhaps providing advice and information to help those whose ends won't meet might help them change ends.


While teaching how to fish, perhaps we can also show where to buy half-price in the mean time.

Country fusion

Unlike many modern things (eg. cars, women and rock'n'roll), food does not appear to fare badly when compared to its previous models. Rarely, if ever, have I heard the phrase “they just don't make burgers like they used to!”. Not that I believe that when used to describe the golden era of any other commodity, that phrase holds much ground. I would much rather drive the cheapest car on the market today (a Kia, a Proton or whatever Great Wall cars recently released) than a 1950's Chevrolet (actually, the Chevys were pretty cool, but their non-existent safety features, lack of aircon, AM only radio and lacklustre steering just don't cut it any more... neither does Elvis). So, seeing as most of the food we consume today was available to previous generations, why doesn't it bear the brunt that only time and wisdom can provide?


It is true that individual ingredients appear to get singled out as deteriorating products: namely tomatoes no longer tasting like tomatoes, and pale egg yolks; but by and large most dishes appear to be enjoyed and praised in a manner suggesting satisfaction, not diminishing standards.


A great example of this was experienced on a recent Sunday drive out country. (The Chevy would've come in handy then, with its bench seating and cruisin' nature, one sure could enjoy music in those cars... sides A and B.) Determined to enjoy a good old-style country-pub lunch, a few of us settled in for a couple of beers at the Healesville Hotel. Unfortunately, a late breakfast had quenched most of our hanger. I, however, was not going to miss out on traditional fare, and as such, we ordered the Shepherds' Pie and Fish 'n' Chips. Not exactly testing, nor showy meals, but old school tucker was the order of the day.


Here, amongst the hordes of city dwellers looking for some country wisdom, lied the perfect opportunity to utter the phrase suggesting previous versions of these meals far outperformed any pleasure currently being felt. But then I savoured one hell of a pie. Nothing fancy, hardly even that memorable (in fact, I'm probably reliving this with a hint of nostalgic inaccuracy) but that slightly modernised version of a shepherds' pie, which one could almost call Modern Country-City Fusion, was spot on.


Sure, I hardly got to enjoy much of it, as my company who exhibited symptoms of 'with-child', quickly devoured it before most of us got a fork in. But I got enough of a taste to tick a box I'd driven 18 gallons for: country food, as good as it ever was.

Putting the x in espresso

My suburb has recently sprouted a new coffee shop. I have seen it every day for the past week, as I make my way up the ramp to my train station. There it stands, less than 50 metres from the platform I patiently wait at every morning, quietly craving away. And yet, I'm still to try it. I put this down to two main points: 

* Metro's (Melbourne's public transport train operators) roulette style time-tabling;
* My monocafenous relationship with Troy, my barista.


Seeing as my train line is known to be punctual only about 65% of the times (and my anecdotal evidence suggests the punctuality rate is way lower at peak hour) it is hard to predict when the train will come. Add to this my own inherent punctuality issues (I blame both nature and nurture for this one), sneaking in for a quick take-away cup is an adventure best left to the audacious ones amongst us.


A different story altogether would be had the café opened up on the train platform itself. What would they have to lose? I can't imagine that in my middle-class suburban haven there would be much of a café society outside of the commuter community. And being located right in front of the train station, their views don't add much to the atmosphere, at least for the less train-ly aroused among us. So why not take the product to the people, avoid the ridiculous rent prices we're currently experiencing across Australia, and crack a deal with Metro to wheel out a cafe-cart. Perhaps even giving the clientele something to do whilst they wait for then next delayed service. (Attention Platform Two: might as well make it a Large, you've got plenty of time!)


This could happen in most train stations, or other places with high levels of foot traffic, in particular where there is a waiting element in place. A large percentage of coffees consumed today (he says using qualitative statements to hide the obvious lack of research) are of the take away variety. And as much as part of the $3 - $4.50 we hand over the counter for 30mls of caffeine and some frothy milk goes towards the décor, music, and the general vibe of the joint, most of that is lost the moment you walk out with your styrofoam/cardboard container full of heart-pumping goodness. Why lead a horse to water, when you can install an Neverfail water cooler in the stable!


Similar concepts are available at almost every market across the country: from the multicultural beauty of the Mindil Night markets in Darwin, to the Anglo havens of the Prahran Markets in Melbourne, you can't escape the expressos; either from the back of a van, or from beautiful bespoke structures complete with patio furniture. There they are, converting beans to means. Why limit these to special events? Everyday people need coffee too.


My second concern, cheating on my barista, would still be an issue. Oh Troy, from TeeRoy Browns on Flinders St (or Banana Alley as it is colloquially known) with whom I've built a strong relationship; having gotten past the awkward first dates, reminding him of how I liked it; through the initial Q&A get-to-know-you sessions; to our now comfortable and fulfilling routine. It would take a special cuppa to steal me away. Especially because Troy makes one of the most consistently awesomest coffees in town! (http://teeroybrowns.com/)


Still, if Troy were to lose the walls, and set-up shop on the side-walk, I wouldn't judge, because it's what's inside the cup that really counts.

A trifeggta

Some days are made for breakfast. Yesterday was one such day.


Waking

Waking up in no mood to be productive, I quickly fell for the charms of the seductive laziness which crept through an open window... how she lured me in with her smooth-talking yawns and caressing bed-sheets. I could smell the sweat aroma of self-indulgence becoming more and more pungent as I made up my mind to achieve nothing by midday. I've always been goal oriented, and this one was just within reach. In the distance I could already see the guilt of yet another day wasted headed in my direction, but for now I was to experience the mental stimulation only the under side of a doona can provide. (step away from the gutter kids...) My procrastinating nature would put the revolution off another day.


Eventually, however, a meal would surely be required for me to sustain the gorgeously rotund figure I've been sporting this season, (all the cool kids my age seem to be doing it). I sometimes question whether I'm putting on weight due to the absolute lack of will power and exercise, or if it's purely peer pressure. Fasting is an activity I've never had much patience for anyway. Breaking it, as a result, is almost an hourly habit.


Venue

This weekend, the feeder role fell upon New York Tomato, undoubtedly named by a geography nerd, it is just as easily found in the Yellow Pages, as on the street guide. (Crn of New and York streets, Richmond... Tomatoes nowhere to be seen). Having secured a nice spot outdoors on a gorgeous Victorian early spring day, as well as ordering the first round of coffees, I proceeded with my attempt at moulding the chair to my bottom, if nothing more than to leave my mark on the place.


Breakfast

The meal was nothing short of delicious. It certainly fulfilled its role. Not only by being flavoursome and thoroughly enjoyable (in particular the whole-seed Hollandaise) but also being infatuatingly fatty and single-platedly putting me in a digestive coma only a few more coffees could get me up from.
Having disengaged myself from the coffee drip, and argued about enough topics to offend half the population, my stay at NYT was coming to an end. It was at this stage I spotted an interesting sticker on the shop window : The Age Cheap Eats 2011. (and possibly previous years as well...)


Specs

Being a regular consumer of breakfasts around town, my anecdotal estimate for a dish (excluding the simpler muesli, fruit salads and other healthy ways of ruining a perfectly good start to the day) in Melbourne is $11-$15. NYT is priced around $15-$18. According to some quick research, the Cheap Eats guide is for any place serving meals under $30. UrbanSpoon also suggests it's $ (not $, or $$). Having never consumed a breakfast over $30, I find it hard to put NYT in such a category.
Fantastic? Definitely. Flavoursome? You bet. Would I take a family of 5 on a single income?... sure, but I still wouldn't call it cheap.



Appendix

Review

For those wondering about the meal itself... They do a potato tortilla, with harissa, chorizo and a poached egg which wonderfully combines Spanish and North African flavours. The spiciness of the harissa and the freshness of the coriander set the agenda, with the potatoes, egg and chorizo providing sufficient variety in textures and flavours in between. Fortunately, I was sharing the table with a very generous breakfast companion, who willingly redistributed their toast, as my dish stood bread-less, making the poached egg-yolk hard to soak up. I also ordered a side of whole-seed Hollandaise, which although might not have mixed well with the other flavours on my plate, is worth adding to any dish!


I also tried their cauliflower claypot, which was truly awful, but that's cauliflower... what can you do.

Streetlessness - a stationary concern

I think we're selling ourselves short. Way short. Australia has some of the best food I have eaten. Sure, this comment can come across a little small-minded, even jingoistic, but I think there are many ways to justify this, which I hope to remember to go into on a post soon. However, regardless of the quality of our food, I don't think we're integrating it into our lives in a memorable and distinct manner. We have kept the act of eating at arms length from our lives.

A list of my most memorable meals, would have a splattering of family gatherings, weekend bbqs, a wedding or ten, and perhaps a few of life's key moments, (queue the tears of joy, saddened longing stares and elated embraces). But once you normalise the equation of life, and focus on the food and atmosphere, then one thing stands out for me... the streets.

I recently got asked about my favourite meals ever, and of the top of my head the first few seemed to be consumed outdoors, standing up, walking or leaning against some railing dividing me from the adventure beyond it. I'm not, as it might be appearing, suggesting that I'm the outdoors type, but become one at feeding times.

I'm not entirely sure of the reasons behind this. Perhaps it's the high results-to-expectation ratio, the russian roulette game being played with salmonela, or that any meat appears to be smoke-cured thanks to the passing traffic, but street (or market) food excite me like no other. I, like many, consume most of my meals at home, an eatery (includes restaurant/cafe/bar/etc), or glued to my work-desk. But whilst travelling, much like my modern cohort, I try to include a generous sprinkling of the outdoor variety.

Banana Crepes - Ho Chi Minh City 

Unfortunately not only for tourists, but more so for locals, street food is a no-show across Australia!

Our travel guides are full of stories of where to get the best 20 baht pad thai, (Victory Monument, BKK, has my vote), how to best match a pilsner to a bratwurst in Vienna, or how many tacos one can get for $2 in Guadalajara, but try picking up a bite on the run in Oz and you'll probably end up scooping a pie at the 7eleven, or one of the trillion McChickenHuts conveniently located by your right foot.

All this despite a growing demand for these cuisines, with every second restaurant opening in Melbourne offering hawker style food, much like 'tapas' recently infested every restaurant and bar in the country like flu-carrying conquistadors. Street Thai, and now Street Vietnamese, are some of the biggest selling recipe books on the market, (and they're not even a MasterCheff spin off!)

Unfortunately, when trying to bring the streets to Melbourne, they skip the pavement, jump a lane way, climb a staircase, and bring out the linen... a-la-carte anyone?

Chin Chin, one of the latest wonders of Melbourne's culinary elite, has been described by Broadsheet (http://www.broadsheet.com.au/melbourne/food-and-drink/article/thai-diner-chin-chin-opens) as “street-inspired Asian food”. This much is surely true, but by the time you waited for a free table (20-50 minutes), viewed the menu (1-15), heard the omnipresent spill explaining how the menu is “designed to be shared” (waiter-dependant), ordered and received the plated food, the street cart which inspired this whole situation has crossed 12 red lights, smoked half a packet and sacrificed 7 chickens at the altar of palm oil!

Similarly overcooked is the menu. Unhappy for us to suffer through mediocrity, it's quality produce throughout. The soups include blue swimmer crab wontons, Hopkins River beef, and Yamba King Prawns. And as wonderful as I assume they all are, (I've only tried 1), they were missing the key ingredient: asphalt.

If Chris Lucas were to stand on the corner of Collins and Russell Sts, serving his delightfully sticky caramelised pork with chilli vinegar, sans fanfare and half the price (seeing as the overheads would be nothing but blue skies), then I'd be heading to my nearest Flight Centre and getting myself a piece of that pie! Conversely, Australian cuisine will continue to be a technically proficient orchestra... there's just no one dancing.

Two Eggs and More

So in the last couple of weekends I've had two very different breakfast experiences: one, a top of the pops, fashionable who's who of Melbourne eateries in the inner north, where the wait-staff seemed to have walked straight out of the sartorialist, the coffees' design matched the décor, and the high ceilings within the recently renovated warehouse could have housed art worthy of the price I paid for the meal; the second an outer suburb coffee shop, complete with coke advertising, a TV showing the latest hits of the 90's (which coincidentally was the last time they updated the menu), clientele who can remember the “talkies”, and genuine pre-mining boom prices.

Surprisingly, I probably won't rush back to either. One because it was a dire disappointment, and the second because the outer suburbs are just too far to drive to on a lazy weekend morning.

At first appearances, everything from the atmos to the menu looked tiptop at Three Bags Full. Having dealt with the internal demons which momentarily suggested my worthiness of breaking bread with such high-society was in question, we sat at the communal table, where the shared sense of fortune at having scored one of the last empty seats was not only palpable but almost suffocating. Sure I have TheAge online readily available at home, but my world knowledge is all the better for having read the communal copy from which countless others, much like myself, fed on throughout the morning. I could almost absorb their intellect by osmosis.

Unfortunately, much like the Sistine chapel, by the time the meal reached my taste buds, the weight of expectation built by walking through all the previous corridors, for hours on end, proved too much for the toasted muffins to carry.  Having moved through the process alike the 5 stages of grief, by the time I got past the anger, I finally walked into the tiny room, looked up at the ceiling and thought: “are those the eggs I'd heard so much about?”. Also, much like the Sistine, everyone seems to be taking photos of the main meal, though at the cafe scene this is not discouraged, but rather seen as free advertising. It would have taken Michelangelo himself to paint on my coffee for me to be somewhat impressed.

In the outskirts of Melbourne, however, my super crispy bacon and eggs, with butter-drowned toast, was nothing short of predictable, the hash-brown a side of deep fried goodness, and the service so forgettable I'm not convinced it wasn't a mirage. But after all that, I walked out satisfied I'd gotten not only what I was after, but what I expected. There's little hope of such a shop, with its pungent aroma of nostalgia for my Brisbane bistro breakfast days, would inspire or even excite me. It fulfilled its role, which was to be a backdrop to the morning's conversation, and absorb the leftover alcohol that a good night left behind.

Unfortunately for most noteworthy cafes, the build up is bigger than the messiah's (first, second or third) coming, (depending on what book you follow). I can't for a second suggest that had I received my Three Bags Full meal at the suburban version, I would not have contemplated becoming a believer myself. But as I cannot completely dissect my experiences, I'll either have to learn to re-calibrate expectations, or move out to Frankston.

Sometimes, however, even if somewhat seldom, one walks into the St Peter's Basilica, and as the crowds dance through the marble floors around you, the twice cooked fat of istra bacon makes its way down your throat, and you think “holly ....”. That's worth a second mortgage.

Hunting menus and plagiarizing collectors

So I find myself committed. Tomorrow I'm to cook for a few friends, and as always I'm trying to plan the menu in advance. I'm uncertain if this is hereditary, but my grandmother moved around the kitchen like a chess board. I remember us having breakfast one morning as she thought out loud “What will we have for dinner?”. She was always thinking two moves ahead...


Tomorrow's will be a set menu, I feel a-la-carte would be pushing it.


Preparing a menu is an interesting process: how many other things are so clearly a mishmash of stolen ideas? In some ways it is like playing with a covers band. I'll be serving someone else's food, but trying to add my individual touch. And the audience appreciates the familiarity. Particularly on a warm Sunday evening, when, beer in hand, a rendition of Crowded House goes down much like your mother's roast.


I'm fairly comfortable with culinary plagiarism, and practice it on a daily basis.


Perhaps of more interest is the amount of time which many, like myself, spend thinking of what our next meal will be. My own repertoire is certainly not worth considering at such lengths. Traditionally, however, we evolved obsessed with where our next meal would come from. Should we walk kilometres and kilometres to pick fruits and root vegetables, or perhaps organise a mob to hunt down a deer. Days upon days wandering the woods in search of such a prey, no doubt spending most of the time in a state of near-starvation, anger and delirium. Now, being well aware that Coles has a nice range of meats, veggies and enough carbos to feed Djibouti, surely we no longer need to preoccupy ourselves with where our next meal is, but somehow we've substituted it with what our next meal will be. I'm not sure if that is evolutionary empathy, or culinary baggage.


I think tomorrow I'll take all the credit. I single-handedly caught the barramundi, picked the lychees, brought the coconuts down from the trees, and while I waited for the rice to grow, I invented Thai food. Why not?