Author: Felicity Newman

So I’m strolling the aisles of my local IGA when I spot a sign telling me they have 3 bunches of local asparagus for $6. Not huge bunches, but fat and juicy spears. Fresh! In like Flynn as we older folks would say.

So when my walking buddy declined our scheduled early dinner yesterday, I was unperturbed. I knew what delights were lurking in my kitchen: organic eggs from my very local Organic Collective ,  locally grown asparagus on woodfired multigrain from Bread in Common .

Okay some folks would say this is breakfast, but I’ll call it supper. Yes I could do with some work on the poached eggs! It did rather cry out for hollandaise but I’ve deliberately failed to learn how to make that as I might end up bathing in it. Better to treat myself to other folks’ work on that high cholesterol delight.  Also why I try and avoid baking… as for deep frying? I’m eyeing off an air-fryer. I’m also hinting broadly with Xmas (and Chanukah) around the corner.

And did you see my FB post about Galatis $1 artichokes?

Must be spring!

Gentrification is not without its advantages. My suburb, Hilton, is within the Fremantle municipality but isn’t as groovy or expensive. For a long time you had to head elsewhere for interesting food and good coffee. Not anymore.  Hilton and indeed Hamilton Hill now have several good places to eat and drink.

I’m not about to provide any 5 star/knife and fork ratings but I do want to let you know about a couple of new local oases. Ready Eddie‘s is definitely a family run business serving Filipino food – and isn’t that something different in Perth? They serve, amongst other things, some damn good barbequed chicken. Service is home-style, unsophisticated but very warm and friendly. There’s a lot of pork on the menu, not my favourite food, but it may be yours.

Then there’s San Zaab Thai Takeaway. Used to be A Taste of Spice in the Lefroy Rd shopping centre.  They don’t have a website, but they have delicious quality Thai cuisine. They are mainly doing take-away but we ate in and received attentive service and great food. I thought hard before recommending this restaurant because I don’t want  to have to fight for a table next time I go. But I want it to prosper.

Ready Eddie: Shop 2, 337 Carrington St. Hamilton Hill: (08) 93373399

San Zaab: 19/115 Lefroy Rd, Beaconsfield  : (08) 6161 6520.

No surprises as to what is making me cross this week. And I’m not surprised to find that much of the cheap honey being sold in supermarkets is not 100% honey. Nor is it 100% Australian product.

Vegans don’t eat honey. I don’t understand this. I do respect those who choose not to eat animals. I’m not so sure about fish, but then my Dad was an enthusiastic angler.  I don’t enjoy seeing fish struggle, or removing the hook. Oh alright I’ve never done more than sun myself on the deck!

But when it comes to honey I’m very confused. How can you give up honey? Where are the swarms of bees demanding the return of their stolen honey? Me? I’m keen on bees. I’ve never been stung (oh, here we go) and they don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them when out gardening.

However, honey is a product of living creatures, as are milk and eggs. If we treat these providers well it doesn’t seem unfair. I will never give up eggs. They are an integral part of Jewish cooking and have the status of being neither milk nor meat, they may be freely eaten. Jews will know what I mean, Orthodox Jews are forbidden from eating milk and meat in the same meal. Eggs go both ways. I buy organically produced eggs and hope the chooks are having fun.

So while I have never visited ‘the land of milk and honey’, I am convinced of the sanctity of those foods. I’ll just add bread of course, with apologies to those restricted to the gluten-free kind. These are staple foods we have eaten for millenia.

But honey!! Honey is indeed the nectar of the gods, it is sublime. It is also the only food which never goes bad. It may go hard but can be made runny again. It is a natural sweetener and I don’t know why anyone would want to eat honey that isn’t honey.

I could rant about the damage the demand for cheap food is doing to farmers and to the environment. But you have probably heard it all before. I do understand that we can only eat food we can afford. I  believe that most of us do buy the best we can afford.

Good honey can be found everywhere. At the moment I’m eating honey from the hives kept in bushland by a work colleague. Let me know if you would like contact details. I’ve also bought honey from a guy who kept hives about four streets from my house. Okay I do live in the latte-loving Fremantle precinct where I’m privileged to be able to source all manner of local produce. We have an excellent grower’s market nearby where I can get organic meat, bread, eggs and local honey.

I can also carry a basket and pretend I’m in Europe. But chances are that you have a grower’s market nearby. Yes I am a fussy foodista, but buying food from the producer is wonderful. And no local honey producer is going to sell you adulterated rubbish.

So a stupid post came up on Facebook that offered to show me the painting that reflects my soul. Putting aside the question of the after-life, I want to say bugger off Facebook because I refuse to engage with their notion of a “soul”. But I do expect art to move me. Last year’s visit to the Van Gogh Museum reduced me to tears at the first sight of one of his self-portraits. Perhaps it was simply being in the presence of the brush strokes of this tortured genius.

FB can keep their algorithmic nonsense to themselves, because there is one painting that reflects and captures the essence of my obsession with food. Vermeer’s The Milkmaid is not a large painting, unlike the many still lives at the Rijksmuseum, too many to even look at.

There was a seat in front of “The Milkmaid” and I spent quite some time with her, having burst into tears yet again. She is a timeless representation of the traditional view of woman as nurturer. What do we associate with nurture more than milk? She’s preparing the family breakfast, though it’s probably not her family, and yet she performs her duties with a such tenderness. It’s been suggested that she may be about to make a bread and butter pudding as she pours the milk from a pitcher into a bowl.

I don’t really care.  I only care about the way Vermeer has captured this fleeting moment of tranquil domesticity. And while my feminist consciousness rejects the notion that this is woman’s natural place, I love the way that Vermeer has celebrated it.

This week we’ve seen an unremarkable PM replaced by a significantly more vicious person. Some of us are breathing a sigh of relief at the elevation of the “not as bad” choice. I generally stick to matters culinary in this blog, but these climate change deniers will do nothing to ensure food security for Australia.

Morrison was the original (!) author of the decision not to provide comment on “on-water matters”. While you might agree with offshore detention, (I don’t), whatever happened to freedom of information in this country? Gulag Australia? Hence my feeble attempt at humour: “A Pentecostal, a Jew and a mad monk walk into a bar”.  There’s no punchline because it’s not funny.

I am a migrant, and the child of a migrant father whose father was a refugee. My Mum was born in the UK as was her mother, but Nana’s parents were refugees from a small town in Lithuania. Unsurprisingly not one Jew from that town survived the Holocaust. My paternal grandfather’s sisters who remained when he fled Tsarist Russia, were never heard from again either, because no-one would take these refugees.

I do take it personally, but then I know that fair minded Australians without these histories also take it personally. The ALP has shown no guts or compassion on this either. Is this what we have become?

I’m a big fan of Samantha Bee and I find her anti-Trump rants are as funny as they are astute. This week she pointed out America’s dependence on so-called “undocumented workers”. She suggests that you shouldn’t “bite the hand that feeds you”. In fact, she goes further arguing the country would go hungry without those folks working in hospitality, food manufacturing and farming. Watch this week’s episode!

Who knows whether Australians still think of us as a multicultural nation? Eating the odd kebab won’t do it, nor will Morrison’s  Scomosas. Yes, we have a multiculinary food culture, but does that make us a successful multicultural nation the week after Fraser Anning’s disgraceful speech? Calm down, we aren’t Singapore!

Some years ago I had the privilege of interviewing esteemed Perth restaurateur Harry Ferrante (Alberto’s, Romano’s, Mama Maria’s, Cicero’s, Harry’s Bar & Grill, Simon’s Seafood Restaurant and Harry’s Seafood Bar & Garden Restaurant) for the brave but sadly defunct SPICE magazine.

Harry had a lot to say about the hospitality industry and Harry was a member of a dying breed – the owner operator. This was the model while I was growing up in Sydney where famed restaurants such as Beppi’s  and The Blue Angel endure. There are also a number of contemporary restaurants doing the same. But we are living in an age where growth is everything and making a tidy profit is not good enough – businesses must grow, apparently.

Justin Hemmes’ Merivale group is an exception. But he has the exceptional talents of Dan Hong! If you haven’t caught the SBS cook show, The Chef’s Line, you should. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/programs/the-chefs-line

Worth a look for many reasons, including food writer Melissa Leong and the Black Olive – bush tucker exponent Mark Olive. No drawn-out tales of “what this means to my Nona and how it’s the only way for me to follow my food dream”. Seems like Masterchef contestants have never heard the word “apprentice”.

But I digress! It takes strong leadership to keep an empire together. Sometimes you wonder why the empire? Why expand if you can’t do so in a business-like manner? Why have George Colambaris’ staff been underpaid to such a great extent?

Apparently George is devastated:

https://www.smartcompany.com.au/people-human-resources/george-calombaris-devastated-repays-workers-2-6-million-poor-processes-lead-underpayment/

I imagine his underpaid staff aren’t thrilled either. Claims of ignorance are a bit hard to digest when speaking of $2.6 million.

But it’s not isolated behaviour. Et tu ponytail?

(https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/rampant-exploitation-at-rockpool-restaurant-empire-20180706-p4zpvc.html)

This isn’t a case of “oops, silly me”. According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

“All point to the group’s dependence on extensive unpaid work by permanent skilled chefs and managers who are often migrants”. http://ww.smh.com.au/business/workplace/rampant-exploitation-at-rockpool-restaurant-empire-20180706-p4zpvc.html

You don’t have to have read Anthony Bourdain to know that cooking in a hot kitchen or whizzing around a busy restaurant for hours on end is damned hard work. Surely being paid for the hours you work is the least you would expect?

Smartfoodmama has been completely absent for a long while ..for reasons best left alone. Please forgive me – I’m back and I promise to post every Friday. This week’s  news is Galati’s 19c butternut pumpkin. Galati’s are offering amazing specials every Saturday and very good value every day.

And on this World Cup final weekend I fondly remember Senora Galati giving my Brazilian ex more than a mouthful when Brazil beat Italy in a penalty shoot-out. Great days..love you guys! Go CroatiAllez les bleus?