A Literary Culinary Journal
by Simon de Swaan
Food is the most primitive form of comfort.–Sheilah Graham
Sheilah Graham Westbrook was an English-born American nationally syndicated gossip columnist during Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” who with Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper wielded power to make or break careers prompting her to describe herself as “the last of the unholy trio.” Graham was also known for her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Click here to read about her life story.
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by Rosa Mayland
INCREASE YOUR GASTRONOMIC EXPERIENCE BY EATING IN SYNC WITH THE SEASONS
With the arrival of hotter weather, I am thrilled that some of my favorite fruits are starting to grace (super)market stalls. They are so fabulous that I can never get enough of them. Not one week goes by without me making either pies, pastries, cakes, trifles, crumbles, clafoutis or cobblers in my itsy-bitsy apartment kitchen.
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by Simon de Swaan
To ask a woman to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality.–Naomi Wolf
Naomi Wolf is an American author and political consultant. With the publication of The Beauty Myth, she became a leading spokesperson of what was later described as the third wave of the feminist movement.
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Switzerland: Cucumber and Tarragon Salad RecipeWhen the days are hot and sultry, few things can be as refreshing as a cold cucumber salad, especially this classic cucumber and tarragon salad. In Switzerland, we make it with sour cream and tarragon, while in France they cook the cucumbers slightly and then add crème fraîche and chives.
This salad goes perfectly with a grilled chicken breast or any white fish. It also goes perfectly with smoked or natural salmon, in which case you might want to replace the tarragon with fresh dill or dill seeds.
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by Alice DeLuca
Assador
This whole adventure started with a search for the perfect sausage to use in a recipe for pork with clams, which led to a little ceramic pig, and ended up with a truly excellent party. This cute little piece of specialty cookware, which looks like footwear for some impossible outer-space monster, is in fact designed for brazing sausages over flaming, hi-octane Portuguese liquor. As we learned the purpose and the method for using this device, we became completely distracted from our original mission and found ourselves planning a sausage-roast.
Sausages roasting over flaming Aguardente
First, we had to obtain the little pig dishes from Portugal – that was easy and took only a few weeks. As soon as the dishes arrived we set about making home-smoked sausages and invited some guests to come over and roast them with us – RSVPs were instantaneous and none declined the invitation.
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Click here for Geneva Tourism’s list. Take a look at this photo documentary of what’s on offer at Swiss farmers markets.
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by Jonell Galloway
Every weekend the Hotel Intercontinental Geneva opens its large outdoor swimming pool to the public. The poolside restaurant serves light, healthy, inventive dishes, such as vegetable tempura (shown below) and mezzes, as well as healthy drinks such as the Detox Smoothie (shown below). They use local and Swiss ingredients as much as possible, buying them directly from farmers and producers and working in close conjunction with OPAGE, the Geneva cantonal promoters for agriculture, so the vegetables and fruit are of a surprising freshness.
The price is 50 CHF for the entire day during the week, and 90 CHF on weekends. It is best to reserve ahead, since on nice sunny days people head for the lake or pools, and Geneva is lacking in large outdoor pools. The spa is right next door and poolsiders, and it is also available pool guests.
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by Renu Chhabra
Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food.–Hippocrates
On warm days we crave cool and refreshing dishes; recipes that require minimum or no cooking to avoid heating up the kitchen seem most desirable. Salads, smoothies, cold soups, and sandwiches take center stage to make our lives a little easier.
One such recipe I enjoy a lot on warm days is cold yogurt soup. With the possibility of several variations, it is always a welcome relief to beat the heat. It is simple and refreshing with no cooking at all, which is always an added bonus when temperatures soar. Moreover, the health benefits of yogurt make it even more worthwhile. It’s good for digestion, and is a powerhouse of beneficial bacteria. But I say it is a “do-good” friend, and I enjoy it everyday.
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by Amanda McInerney
Whenever anyone asks me what were the high points of our recent trip to Europe I always answer with two simple words: the food. We happily indulged ourselves whenever possible, knowing we would be walking it all off within days, and I was pleased to note that I came home carrying no extra baggage except for my shopping.
I was having a conversation about our foodie finds with my friend Kris Lloyd, the cheese-making talent behind South Australia’s multi-award winning Woodside Cheese Wrights, not long after we got back and was waxing lyrical about some butter made from clotted cream (cultured butter) which we had bought on our last day in London. It was part of a significant haul that we took home from London’s Borough Markets for a final feeding frenzy before we flew home and had made quite an impression. Kris commented that she had recently been “playing around” (her words) with cultured butter, including one which she had washed in whiskey. With the taste of the delicious, golden London lipids still lingering, to say I was eager to try Kris’ efforts would be something of an understatement.
Cultured butter is something of a recent discovery for many Australians, but has been in use for hundreds of years in Europe. The butter we are used to is what Europeans refer to as “sweet cream butter” — delicious, but lacking the depth of flavour of cultured butter. Cultured butter is made in exactly the same way as ordinary butter, but a live culture is added to the cream which is allowed to ripen for some time before being churned, salted (or not) and rinsed. Kris adds the culture to her cream 24 hours before she uses it to make butter, giving the cream time to “clot”. Cultured butter has a richer, deeper flavour, which some find somewhat tangy, and also comes with a little probiotic boost from the addition of the live culture.
Kris gave me three different batches to play around with — an almost unsalted butter, salted butter and the remarkable whiskey-washed version — and I’ve had a very happy day or two getting to know them. They are all truly delicious and definitely add an extra facet to the dishes I used them in: a Mushroom and Almond Bruschetta with Chèvre and Vanilla-Poached Oranges with Pikelets. I kept these recipes fairly simple in order to let the ingredients do the talking. There’s no point in using outstanding produce and then smothering it with other flavours and fancy techniques; good food doesn’t need to be tricky. The mushrooms I used came from Marco the Mushroom Man in the Adelaide Central Market and the sublime oranges were in our CSA box from Jupiter Creek Farm, all fresh, local and fabulous. I couldn’t help adding some wonderful Beerenberg Caramelised Onions to the mushroom dish. They finished it off perfectly.
Prep time: 5 mins
Cooking time: 10 mins
Total time: 15 mins
Serves: 2
This made a good lunch for 2, but would also make an entrée for 4.
Click here for metric-Imperial conversions.
The whiskey-washed butter was used in an even simpler dish of pikelets (small bite-sized pancakes) with vanilla-poached oranges, but the combination was absolutely stunning and much appreciated by the guests to whom I served it yesterday for afternoon tea. My good friend Meg is very partial to a wee dram or two of whiskey and her eyes glazed over just a little while eating these.
I’m sure everyone can work out how to make basic pikelets.
As for the vanilla-poached oranges: the oranges were simply peeled, making sure all of the pith was removed, sliced about 10mm thick and gently poached for ten minutes in a syrup made of 1 1/2 cups of white sugar, 1/2 cup of water and one vanilla bean, split open and scraped – hardly a recipe at all! I cooled them slightly in the syrup, buttered the hot pikelets with the whiskey-washed butter and layered the oranges and pikelets, topping with a dab of the precious butter. Eat, then swoon.
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Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
