Monthly Archives: August 2011

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Evil

The Australian Truffle Industry’s history is fairly short; the first trees seeded with black truffle spores took place in Australia in 1993 and the first truffle was produced six years later in 1999, in Tasmania.

The Western Australians were instrumental in commercialising the industry in the mid 2000′s and now there are growers in every state and territory (bar the NT), with an estimated 150 registered growers. The Tasmanian and Western Australian growers still lead the way, by way of larger commercial growing operations, but NSW and Victorian growers contribute to over 60% of the market with approximately 95 smaller scaled independant and contracted grower truffière.

In 2010, Australian production of Black Truffle was estimated at 1.7 tonne and it’s forecast that by the end of the 2011 season, production will double. The Australian Truffle Industry is only a baby, but growing at an exponential rate.

I blame the wines, a later than normal night on a school night and the intense flavour of truffle that continued to resonate on my tastebuds, but it was mainly the wines.

After the Truffle Redux last Monday night, I foolishly jumped online and ordered a 50g truffle from Friend & Burrell for my own greedy experiments and consumption. The rest of the week was largely spent worrying about what to make with it. The other bits of the week left over were dealing to my buyer’s remorse. But hey, it’s tax refund time; if you can’t treat yourself, what can you do?

See? There’s always a plausible rationale. And a lot less coin than year’s 55 inch LED 3D TV that I was compelled to purchase for the family.

After some advice from SJ and Mat Beyer, I decided to hedge my bets and knock out a number of things to try the truffle in a few different ways.

Bryan Burrell and I coordinated our rendezvous out the front of my city office building on Friday afternoon. It reminded me a little of how a covert drug deal might go down. He rings me, I give him the location in code, he meets me downstairs, he’s the one in the dark glasses and overcoat, I’m wearing a flower in my lapel… well, that wasn’t exactly how it played out. The most striking thing was the undeniable perfume that hit you in the face like a rolled up newspaper when Bryan opened the back door to his car.

WHACK! It may indeed put you off truffles, through desensitisation. Then again it might not. It was amazing! Just when I couldn’t get more impressed, Bryan opened a large styrofoam esky to reveal a casual 8kgs of Western Australian truffles that arrived the day before. That was 24 grand’s worth of gear right in front of my eyes, only no threat of getting busted by ‘the man’.

Bryan also generously threw in some of their Iranian Sargol saffron and several Papa New Guinean vanilla beans to try out. For that, Bryan, you get a second plug:
http://www.friendandburrell.com.au/

Thanks heaps!

Our 'third' child... but not for long

So with the exchange made, I raced straight home to settle my new baby in with whatever eggs we had in the fridge to impart the truffle flavour through the pourous egg shell and permeate the egg itself. I don’t remember much of high school science lessons, but I am thankful for osmosis in this instance.

 The next day was Saturday; time for a few preparations. The first cab off the rank was Truffled Butter. SJ put me onto Naomi’s Butter, made lovingly by Naomi Ingleton at The Butter Factory in Myrtleford, Victoria. Fortunately, Key Ingredients in Clifton Hill were relatively close to save me having to battle the Queen Vic Markets. Or the drive to Myrtleford.

There wasn’t much science to making the butter. I was more trying to get over the anxiety of cutting into ’Nugget’. Sure, he’d only been part of  our family for around 18 hours, but he’d given so much joy to us. Mainly through us opening the fridge door and taking a big whiff. But it was time for some amputation.

Experiment # 1: Truffled Butter

For the 250g stick of butter, I decided 15g of truffle would be appropriate. So I had a best guess at slicing off roughly a third and the scales told me I was only 1 gram off at 16g. So far so good.

Fifteen grams of truffle looks like a lot when it goes through a microplane. After a quick mix of the planed truffle through the softened butter, I scooped the lot into a ramekin, covered it with cling wrap and chucked it into the fridge. After sampling what little evidence of truffled butter remained in the mixing bowl, I was glad I opted for salted butter.

Truffle dish number two was going to be a given. Since we missed out on sampling the Fromager des Clarines at the truffle dinner, I was always going to have to make this. Plus, it was also a tactic for K to approve of my extravagant purchase. 

Dairy loves Truffle

Although it seemed as simple as cutting horizontally into a chilled wheel of soft cheese, loading it up with as much truffle as it will hold, put the halves back together and wait for a few days before greedily tucking in, there were some specific instructions I was provided to ensure optimal success. I mean, throwing fifty bucks worth of truffle into an already twenty dollar cheese makes it a tad expensive experiment, therefore I wanted to get it as right as I could.

Now, that's a fuckload of truffle!

Mat’s Advice: Microplane the truffle, allowing more surface area to absorb into the truffle, give it 7-10 days for the flavours to develop and probably the most important, newly created unit of measure in the kitchen; use a fuckload.
 
SJ’s Advice: Scoop out some of the insides to enable the said ‘fuckload’ of truffle, use the excess cheese to reseal the cut edge  and wrap tightly in silicon paper before storing back in the fridge.
 
All advice was duly taken and actioned.
 
The remaining 18 grams of truffle is still keeping the eggs company; bearing in mind that with every day that passes, is another day that ‘Nugget’, loses a little of his aroma and flavour. I am sure this weekend will involve another truffle recipe, in addition to and probably including the aforementioned butter and cheese.
 
For now, I’m thinking maybe chicken breast with truffle under the skin, cooked sous vide (in my own dodgy way), browned up in the pan with some truffled butter until the skin is crispy and finished with a champagne sabayon, made with the truffled eggs… too much truffle perhaps, or is there no such thing?
 
So, what to do with the remaining truffle? 
 
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Trufflepalooza!

Most places you go to where there’s truffle listed on the menu can leave you quite underwhelmed; it’s either a little on the miserly side, attracts an unreasonable ’supplement’ or, God forbid, some kind of laboratory-developed synthetic truffle flavour is used… like some establishments that offer truffled mash, only it tastes nothing like truffle. Or mash for that matter.
 

Monday night’s Olifactory extravaganza redux: end of season truffle tasting dinner, largely organised by SJ from Essjay Eats and Tomatom’s Ed Charles, was my first ‘foodie event’… and what an event to kick things off - a carefree and unabashed microplaned showering of Australia’s best truffles; nuggets of pungent, musty and intense flavour. Nothing compares.

Otway Truffles

Friend & Burrell were on board to generously provide half a kilo of black truffles at wholesale cost from Western Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales. And as a last minute surprise, thanks to a couple of ‘gatecrashers’, two very handsome truffles were also donated by Otway Harvest Truffles and Sunnybrae Restaurant’s George Biron, which were transformed into a ‘surprise’ course.

Wines for the night were provided by winemaker Adam Foster and slaving away in the kitchen were Scott Pickett and Ryan Flaherty… which kinda gives away that this extravaganza was being held at what is becoming my second home, The Estelle.

The kitchen delivered a menu that encapsulated Scott and Ryan’s style, including many of the familiar signature elements and flavours that keep me coming back to this wonderful place. We opened with The Estelle’s amuse bouche; chickpea chips and sardine fossils. They’re still good. Unfortunately the fossils didn’t make it to our table. 

Wagyu bresaola and quail egg truffle

First up was the Jerusalem artichoke veloute, Wagyu bresaola and quail egg with Tasmanian truffle.

This was the first sign that the truffles were definitely not going to be served up with any restraint.

The combination of salty bresaola, rich and unctuous quail egg and the heady perfume of the truffle made this two-mouthful treat disappear far more quickly than I would have liked.

The accompanying Jerusalem artichoke veloute was as  rich, creamy and velvety as I’d imagined it would be and it complimented the bresaola like a vegemite and cheese; albeit several hundred points up the scale in terms of deliciousness and execution.

The dish was matched with the 2011 Foster e Rocco Rose from Heathcote. A great match, with some acidity to counter the richness of the dish.

"old school egg"

Next up was a favourite; “old school egg”. One of Scott’s signature dishes, a perfectly poached egg atop the most creamy, rich polenta you will ever encounter and a generous shaving of Western Australian truffle.

This dish, like the first, confirmed that the flavour of the truffle is driven hard by the not only the richer elements of the dish (fat being a carrier of flavour), but also enhanced by the seasoning of the dish.

Thank God for salt and fat, I guess.

A relatively young and fresh 2011 Foster e Rocco Nuovo Sangiovese was paired with this dish and again, the wine truly complimented the dish through its lightness, standing up to the dish, but in no way overpowering. It also reminded me that the warmer months are also just around the corner.

We were at the halfway point with the next dish; hand made farfalle with king brown mushrooms and pan-fried cauliflower, teamed up with the New South Wales Black truffle.

Handmade farfalle, king brown mushrooms & cauliflower

Needless to say this dish was again packed with flavour, with the caramelised cauliflower adding a little sweetness amongst the earthiness of the king brown and truffles.

The accompanying 2010 Foster e Rocco Sangiovese was again light, but a tad more robust and still a little fruity, with a little acidity kick at the end.

I have been a big fan of the two desserts I have tried at The Estelle thus far. Unfortunately, the Rice pudding, puffed rice and beetroot just didn’t hit the mark with me. Rice pudding is one of those polarising dishes where you either had it as a kid growing up and in your later years you’re repulsed by it (mainly thanks to growing up with poor, stodgy versions) or it’s a comforting ‘nursery food’… a pick-me-up when you’re feeling down.

For mine,  I can take it or leave it. The Estelle’s Rice pudding was light and not overly sweet, but the beetroot jam / coulis didn’t taste of anything and the puffed rice made me feel like I was eating a some breakfast concoction in the Qantas Club.

Rice pudding, puffed rice & beetroot

As for the addition of truffle, it didn’t work for me. As much as I believed the Western Australian truffles were the best of the night, their flavour in this dish was lost. Perhaps it was because the dish was cold. Perhaps the absence of salt or seasoning failed to enhance the flavour of the truffle, as was the case in the former dishes.

The grand finale of the night and probably the most anticipated dish (at least from K’s perspective) was the bonus dish made with the Otway Truffles; Baked Jean Perrin Fromager des Clarines, with lashings of truffle.

Unfortunately for us, as we were seated along the bench at the front of the restaurant and we were asked by the waiter to join in with the table closest to us. By the time we’d waited for the table to share the Fromager des Clarines around, we’d missed out as the waiter hadn’t passed on that we were joining them. A little bit of an uncomfortable situation, which was a bit of a downer at the end of what was a memorable night.

A big thanks to the aforementioned Ed, SJ and the other wonderful people involved for pulling this together. It’s people like these that inspire people like me, who are only just starting out in food blogging, to want to enjoy and experience more of what this fantatic city, state and country has to offer and to hopefully contribute for the better to educate others in the appreciation of good food.

For more information, check out:
http://www.fringefoodfestival.com.au

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Creatures of Habit

We are all creatures of habit. We like stuff a certain way and if that stuff is a little bit different from the last time, we can become a little perturbed.

“Can you please put the [insert sauce here] on the [insert protein here], but not on the [insert vegetables here]?”

God forbid if there’s gravy on the vegetables. I’ve nearly sustained a fork in the groin for getting that wrong.

There are also the burger people, who proceed to dissect the burger, eating each layer individually. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember, much to K’s disdain. Mind you, she eats the least favourite thing on her plate first and so on until she gets to her favourite thing on the plate… which is usually the meat.  See? We all do something weird when it comes to our food preferences.

My typical weekday lunch is to grab a sandwich and take it back to my desk to eat it (without deconstructing it). However today I had a few errands to run, so rather than grab something when I got back, I decided to take a few minutes to sit and enjoy something a little more exciting than a ‘sammich’.

Phở is becoming a favourite of mine and is a healthy alternative to most lunch options, as is most Vietnamese cuisine. A good phở can be hard to come across, particularly if the broth is insipid, but a quick check of Vietnamese Restaurants, Melbourne CBD on urbanspoon narrowed it down for me.

Mekong was busy, so that was a good sign. I was quickly ushered to a spare seat next to a guy that looked like a phở junkie from way back. It can be a little weird dining by yourself, but in a place like this where most of the tables are communal, it didn’t really matter. I decided to order the Phở Ga Dac Biet, also known as Chicken ‘Special’ …

Waiter: [pauses] “Umm… you know…”

Me: “Yes, I know”

Waiter: [excited that the gwai lo / farang / or whatever the Vietnamese vernacular is for a Westerner, is giving Phở Ga Dac Biet a crack]: “OK, cool”

To clarify, the ‘special’ part relates to the special parts of the chicken. You know, most of the bits that repulse most Westerners and are often discarded; namely offal.

For those unfamiliar with phở, origins aside, it’s a clear broth with a specific cut of white rice noodles (called bánh phở’) and is usually served with beef or chicken.

The broth for beef phở is generally made by simmering beef; bones and meat, charred onion (for colour), charred ginger and spices, including cinnamon, star anise, ginger, black cardamom, coriander seed, fennel seed and clove. Chicken phở is made using the same spices as beef phở, but the broth is made using only chicken meat and bones.

Beef phở usually comes with finely cut boiled beef (steak, flank, brisket) or thin slices of raw flank. Tendons, tripe and balls (meatballs, not testicles) can also feature. Chicken phở is served with breast meat and commonly features the giblets, hearts, livers and sometimes an unborn chicken egg, which even I would probably draw the line at.

But the best part of slurping down a steaming bowl of phở are the condiments and whilst I was sitting there waiting for my lunch to arrive, it dawned on me… All of these people around me had their own routine regarding phở. It was brilliant!

Accompanying the phở is a side plate which contains lemon wedges, bean shoots and Vietnamese mint, which you add as much or as little as you like. The table is also crammed full of other delicious condiments; vinegared white onions (hành dấm), fresh green and red chillies, chilli paste, hoisin sauce, fish sauce and a variety of other bottles and jars of flavours, which I’ve yet to discover.

The guy next to me looked as though he was counting the slices of fresh chilli to get the heat ‘just right’, the guy opposite me tore his mint into tiny, teeny pieces and mixed them through his phở for even distribution, then made sure his bean shoots were well immersed into the broth. As for my routine, I’m still finding my true preference, but so far it’s a small squirt of hoisin for a little sweetness, a squeeze of lemon for some acidity, a little chilli paste for some warming base heat and a generous amount of fresh chilli.

Next time, I will spend more of my time people-watching to discover other’s secrets to build the ideal phở.

I will also spend some time observing the secrets as to how not to splatter broth on my shirt as I am far from getting that right.

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Bar Lourinhã – 37 Little Collins St, Melbourne

Sir Bob Geldof said he didn’t like Mondays. I think he was referring to his vain attempts to find somewhere open in Melbourne for a drink on a Monday night. You see, it’s a little bit hit and miss. And Tuesdays can be a bit like that too.

We had dinner arranged (and by arranged, I mean we were going out for dinner, that was as far as our plans extended) and the first couple of places we tried for some pre-dinner drinks, we were met with locked doors. I should have done my homework first. We eventually found Comme was open and settled there for a couple before heading to Bar Lourinhã.

It’s an odd little place. There’s not much of it, which adds to the charm as do the objets d’art that fill the wall behind the bar. Given that there are no reservations taken for less than 8 people, you roll the dice and take your chance with a smaller group, unless you have enough people to book the private dining room known as ‘The Chapel’.

As charming as the place is, I was unfortunately a little underwhelmed by the food. This was a little frustrating because there are so many good reviews and don’t get me wrong, there were a couple of wonderful bites, but the ‘main’ dishes were lacking.

Firstly, the good stuff; the house made green cracked olives ($8) are the best olives I have ever tasted. These plump babies are not too salty, which means that there is a good, fruity olive flavour and a texture that provides a slight crunch, yet is also a little yielding.

The other two standouts were the banderillas ($5 each); a small skewer of fresh tuna and a pickled chilli, generously anointed with good, fruity olive oil and the lardo soldiers (also $5 each); well charred sticks of sourdough, wrapped in thinner-than-paper slices of the tastiest cured pork back fat, which melts into the bread. Definitely not good for you, but addictive.

It was after such a promising start that the dishes went a little downhill thereafter. The surf clam, prawn and white bean stew ($24) was quite insipid. Underseasoned and almost no flavour at all, particularly as it may have been all soaked up by an overly excessive amount of white beans.

Our dish of rabbit ($24); the meatly saddle and some meatless front leg were a little dry and the kidney was over cooked. The cooking juices and the accompanying bits of potato and onion didn’t really taste of anything remarkable. Another let down.

As a ‘special’ dish on the night, the smoked corn salad ($16), was also disappointing and a little too pedestrian; chargrilled corn cut straight from the cob, potato, some red onion and coriander… something you’d be happy to find a friend’s BBQ but nowhere near enough to the mark for being slugged sixteen dollars.

To drink, we stuck with the Castro Martin Albariño ($58), which was a food all-rounder to match the seafood and rabbit.  Bar Lourinhã also makes a mean version of an Espresso Martini (Harlem End – $18), with Caffe Moka; an Italian coffee liqueur, espresso and a dash of Pedro Ximénez for a Spanish twist.

I’ve read and re-read other reviews on Bar Lourinhã and I still don’t know where I/we went wrong. Everyone else likes it, so why was my trip so disappointing? And for what worked out to be around $100 per head, I was lucky someone else was generous enough to pick up the tab that night.

Bar Lourinhã
37 Little Collins St, Melbourne 3000
(03) 9663 7890
 
Good for: wonderful ways with lardo, olives, espresso martinis
Not good for: overpriced salads
 

Bar Lourinhã on Urbanspoon

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Child of the 80′s

Growing up in Adelaide’s north-eastern suburb of Modbury North in the early 1980′s was probably the same as any other Australian suburb at the time in a food sense; you had a charcoal chicken shop and a fish and chip shop, both within walking distance from home.

If it was a special occasion, we had a local Chinese Restaurant called The Rickshaw Inn. If it was a really special occasion (buggered if I knew the difference), we went to another Chinese Restaurant called The Golden Harvest, which was a whole extra 5 minutes away in the car. I think they had bigger Lazy Susans. 

If you wanted something a little more exotic, you had a choice of Italian or… actually, that was probably it. There were landmark Adelaide Italian restaurants like Marcellina, La Trattoria, Don Giovanni’s or La Tombola; your ‘authentic’ Italian restaurants, set up by the Italian immigrants in the 50′s or 60′s, complete with the bottles of Chianti in baskets and bona fide red gingham tablecloths. Unfortunately these were places where our parents went without us. Instead, we got to go to Pizza Hut when it was still a dine-in family restaurant and no 13 11 66 pizza delivery.

Cooking at home was largely your more average cuts of meat; forequarter chops, rump steak… all done to near death under the grill or vertical grill… and sausages, all with lashings of tomato sauce and three boiled vegetables (usually potatoes, carrots and beans) or salad. Looking back, it was all pretty uninspiring, but at the time it wasn’t bad; we just didn’t know how good things could be.

Nowadays, we have 24-hour cooking shows on Foxtel’s Lifestyle Food channel and we have Masterchef blasting into our lounge rooms 6 days a week, with people rushing down to their local Coles on a Saturday morning for beef short ribs, daikon and the ingredients for master stock (only to find there are no short ribs or daikon).

Cooking is now far more central to people’s lives. Right around the country there are hundreds of people having a crack at cooking their two-minute noodles, sous-vide, muttering to themselves “…if that Dani can make it into the top 4, then surely I can belt out a Goats Curd and Vanilla Bean Cheesecake with Poached Cumquats and Spiced Pumpkin for the family’s Sunday night dessert”.

Of course, it wasn’t always like that. In the 80′s there would have been some Keith Floyd drunken shenanigans on the ABC every now and again, but that was it. And we weren’t trying to emulate Keith… Although who secretly wishes they could chain-smoke and drink a couple of litres of wine whilst trying to belt out a Toulouse Cassoulet in front of a camera. Now THAT’S talent, Gary and George!

 The majority of Australians were and probably still are indebted to Women’s Weekly (and Margaret Fulton) for teaching them how to cook. Everyone’s mum probably owns the Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book. I have both the original edition (re-released in February 2011 as a ‘Vintage’ Collector’s Edition) and a newer version, published in 2006.  

One of my earliest recollections of cooking was via mum’s Women’s Weekly recipe card library. I think they re-released them a couple of times in the early 80′s after their initial run in the late 70′s, so it probably wasn’t the first time around that I recall going shopping with mum and picking up the weekly collection of cards from the kiosk counter at our local Coles for $1.99.

There were 24 categories of cards to collect; from Best Beef Recipes to Fine Foods from Faraway Places, plus 9 ‘Special Edition’ categories, featuring Family Meals from the Freezer and Dramatic Dinner Parties.

With well over 600 recipes to choose from, I can only ever remember three recipes that were ever made, albeit on a moderately frequent rotation; Lemon Chicken, Quiche Lorraine and German Coffee Cake.

Sometimes you just crave the things that were familiar and comforting in your childhood. Being taken back to a time when things were at their simplest; no debt, no stress, no work issues, no sore backs… although on Sunday it might have just been the hangover. For some reason, that German Coffee Cake was the familiar and comforting thing that lingered in my mind… again, it might have just been the hangover.

So I began my search using my good friend, Google. Mum always referred to the German Coffee Cake as “Deutsche Kuchen”, which I now know translates to “German Cake”. Gee, I’m lucky that narrowed it down! I did however, come across a whole set of the Women’s Weekly recipe cards on eBay for $50. I resisted the temptation to place a bid and moved on.

Getting a little frustrated with what was becoming a futile exercise, I finally narrowed my search for “German Coffee Cake” to Australian only websites and lo and behold, there it was. I knew it was the recipe I was looking for because it contained one particular ingredient that prior to me finding this recipe, I could not remember what it was, but as soon as I saw it, I knew. 

It was mashed potato. Other than the fats in the milk, there are no other ingredients in the cake that provide the moistness that you’d normally get from eggs and butter. Maybe mashed potato was used as a substitute when dairy was scarce.

After a quick pantry and fridge inventory, I was happy that I had all of the ingredients required, with the exception of mixed peel. I can’t ever remember mum putting mixed peel into the cake she made. She isn’t the mixed peel type. I am the mixed peel type and as a substitute, I decided to add the zest of a lemon, given that lemon juice was listed as an ingredient… which I later forgot to add anyway.

So, here it is…

German Coffee Cake

1/2 – 3/4 cup mashed potato
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup sultanas
1/4 cup mixed peel… or not, if you’re not the mixed peel type
1 1/2 cups of milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 cups self-raising flour

Crumble Topping

1/2 cup sugar
60g butter
1/2 cup self-raising flour
2 teaspoons nutmeg

Firstly, it clearly struck me that the recipe wasn’t made in the same vein of preciseness as most baking recipes are. So based on this and the fact that I was quickly losing interest in the whole thing, I decided to measure things by eye.

There was one big potato in the pantry and it looked as though it would yield anywhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of a cup of mash. So I cooked the potato and put it through the ricer. It looked close enough… in any case that was the last potato, so I pushed on and added what looked like three-quarters of a cup of sugar and creamed the two ingredients together to resemble a muddy, yet sweet potato sludge.

To the sludge, I added the milk, sultanas and lemon peel, plus some chopped up dried apple because I was living on the edge and decided to get even more daring. This is probably what led me to forget the lemon juice.

I was also trying to minimise the amount of dishes to clean up afterwards, so being even more rebellious, I decided not to sift the flour into the liquid. I don’t think it mattered. Instead, I slowly folded the flour into the liquid with a spatula to create a quite dense and very stubborn cake batter… stubborn, in that it stuck to everything, me included.

Once all of the flour had been incorporated, I transferred the batter into a lined baking tray, which in my case was a small (34cm x 22cm) Scanpan roasting pan, which afterwards would require very little or no cleaning. I wet my hands to smooth out the cake batter so it was evenly distributed in the pan.

The crumble was a no-brainer. Like any crumble you’d make for… a crumble. I chopped up the butter and thew it into a bowl, working the butter into the remaining ingredients with my finger tips until I had something that loosely resembled crumble. Once I’d sprinkled the crumble evenly over the cake, it went into a 180 degree celcius oven for 40-45 minutes. At the 20 minute mark, I was a bit concerned that my crumble was browning too much, so I chucked some alfoil over the top and took it off with five minutes to go.

The end result was exactly how I remembered it; a moist, slightly dense, yet yielding crumb – all thanks to that mashed potato. Next time, I think I’ll add even more apple, less sultanas and keep the lemon zest in place of mixed peel. As an 80′s classic (in our kitchen, anyway) made some 30 years later, I think it hit the mark and it might just very well continue to get some rotation in our kitchen in 2011 and beyond.

We’ve come a long way in 30 years. My eldest daughter (who’s 4) has grown up in a house with a kitchen full of diverse ingredients which she probably thinks is the norm, although her idiot daddy is probably a little too obsessed; six or seven different vinegars, including 30-year old balsamic, fresh parmesan (not that toe jam-smelling one in the green container that we had as kids), prime cuts like eye fillet and standing rib roasts, making sushi or onkonomiyaki with kewpie mayonnaise and tonkatsu sauce. She’s even had truffles.

I’ve given up saying (mainly to myself) at the dinner table, “I never had [insert food item here] when I was 4″. Mind you, she’d probably be just as happy with a forequarter chop, done to near death under the grill with lashings of tomato sauce and three boiled vegetables.