thefidgetyfoodie

A mile of wine (literally)

Posted on June 13, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

The Saale-Unstrut wein region

This time last year I was preparing for a challenging aerobic goal.

Not it wasn’t a half marathon or the City2Surf. I was training to walk a mile.

But not just any mile. A wine mile. Or Weinmeile to be precise (and Germans are always precise).

The pretty town of Naumburg

Tucked away in Saxony is the town of Naumburg (not to be confused with Nuremberg), which sits in Germany’s northernmost wine region of Saale-Unstrut. Naumburg is a picturesque medieval town, filled with castles and architectural ruins from its heyday as an important fair and trade centre.

A typical house with a terraced vineyard for a backyard

Many people live along the Saale river which runs through the town and most houses have a little vineyard tucked away on the steep slope of their backyard. Once a year in June, every household along the river bands together to celebrate the local wine industry by hosting the Saale Weinmeile – a day of walking, drinking and feasting in the sunshine.

The Saale river

I was staying with friends Marc and Kathleen in nearby Leipzig when they casually mentioned they’d be taking me to a fun wine event about an hour away. I didn’t realise just how much fun we would end up having (or how much wine we’d end up drinking!).

Willkommen to the Weinmeile!

We joined the throngs of people at the starting point, draped with a welcoming banner. Every house along the river participated in some way – usually with a stand selling glasses and bottles of their homemade wine and food.

One of the many stands spruiking local wine

As a group of six we decided early on that bottles would be our currency and we picked one up every few stands. Someone had the clever idea to also kick off with a bratwurst or two to provide some ballast for what lay ahead.

Grüner Silvaner was another of my favourites wine varieties

It was a scorching hot summer’s day in June so the locally grown crisp white wines that we encountered at every step were an ideal refreshment. The mild climate that comes from the river valley is perfect for cultivating dry white wines with a fruity flavour.

A snapshot of one wine menu

Initially I didn’t recognise a single grape variety but I learnt quickly that Kerner and Müller-Thurgau, followed closely by Grüner Silvaner, were my favourite grape varieties, reminiscent of my perennial favourites Riesling and Gewurztraminer.

Hand-knitted wine holders – genius!

My friends Bjorn and Antonia were such professionals, they brought their own woollen wine glass holders. I was so jealous. Read More

Getting souped up for winter

Posted on June 1, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Lifting the lid on Transylvanian ciorbă soup

Today is the first day of winter in Australia.

And it’s cold!!! Cold for Aussies means fifteen degrees. Brrrghhh.

It’s sprung up on us because we generally skip autumn and go from the rays of summer straight into a determined chill. It always takes me by surprise and yes, I’m subsequently writing this in a robe and slippers.

So it seems like the perfect time to talk soup and I have many fond memories to ladle out.

Ciorbă soup housed in a dome of bread

Like this ciorbă de fasole cu costiţă afumată soup I had in Sighișoara, Romania last year. I’d heard about an infamous Transylvanian soup, in this case made with beans and smoked ham served in bread, and wanted to track it down. The soup was just as dramatic as the medieval fortress of Sighișoara itself and so delicious. I took particular joy in scraping the inside to extract broth-soaked bread, layer by layer.

Filled with a heady bean, pork and spice laden soup

I only made it about halfway through before my stomach gave up. It filled me up for a day and was only 15 lei – around €4.

Freshly served elk soup

My good old friend, Estonian elk soup, is the ultimate comfort food in a bowl, served alongside elk pies and pickles and accessorised with a complimentary Estonian wench to serve and rouse on guests.

I wonder if there’s a symbiotic relationship between how cold you feel and how much you enjoy your soup – I’d say definitely yes.

I remember feeling like an icy pole when I went to Iceland. And I was there in summer.

I constantly took refuge in the shops to momentarily melt and peruse expensive wool jumpers.

Icelandic fish soup served on a delightful fish plate

In between I’d dart out for a hot dog and then some Icelandic fish soup which is rich, warming and full local seafood. My all-time favourite bowl was in Húsavík (the self-appointed whale watching capital of the world) with my friends Elfa and Siggi.

That’s borscht at the front, vegetable soup at the back

My favourite soup for colour is always borscht and the versions I tried in Poland, especially at quirky milk bars, were sensational. The milk bars often serve a hot and cold version, both equally cerise and equally good, especially alongside a pierogi or five.

A line up of traditional Hungarian soups

Now let’s talk about goulash.

But that’s not a soup; I can hear your muttering.

Well in Hungary it is. Somehow the rest of the world misread the brief and turned it into more of a stew-like dish but on its home turf, gulyás is decidedly a soup. And boy do the Hungarians do an excellent job in merchandising this signature dish.

Every festival or event you go to will have at least one stand with a cauldron-esque contraption full of the steaming stuff. They ladle out the beef and vegetable broth enthusiastically and serve it with chunks of bread.

Tureens of rich Irish seafood chowder

I can’t talk soup without talking Irish seafood chowder. My most memorable bowl was in Doolin, a windswept cliff-hugging town in County Clare. Local seafood, tender potatoes and cream combine like some kind of x-rated threesome. It’s the only thing one should eat at the local pub with the bellow of traditional Irish music in the background.

Perfectly chilled gazpacho

As a final wild card I’m going to throw in gazpacho – that’s for those of you on the other side of the world. I love love love gazpacho and don’t think I’ve ever had a bad version anywhere in Spain. This one came from Mallorca and the refreshing chill of the tomato, garlic and chilli was the perfect accompaniment to the hot sun of the island.

It almost makes me want to take off my slippers…

Behind the scenes at a Eurovision party

Posted on May 26, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

My Eurovision survival kit

I have a thing for Eurovision parties.

Is it because of my European background? The fact that I embrace sequins and big hair? Was I over exposed to a wind machine at an early age?

I’ve never quite worked it out. But at some point it became a thing for me and I’ve subsequently felt compelled to throw a party in honour of this landmark event ever since.

And while everyone else is focused on the singing (or lack thereof), I’ve always been firmly focused on the food.

My handmade flags are ready to go

This year I approached things a little differently. Each of my guests was allocated a country and instructed to bring food or drink from that country. I put a lot of thought into the allocation – giving friends a country where we’d travelled together if possible. That’s how I ended up with a dining table practically groaning under the weight of the collective culinary output of the EU.

Gluhwein is my go-to Eurovision beverage

As host I decided I would represent Austria (the host of this year’s Eurovision) and Australia.

First up was a heady pot of glühwein, perfect to counter the early winter chill in the air. I cooked the wine for hours with cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves and slices of fresh orange. Intoxicating.

Mum’s carefully arranged Wiener schnitzel

I couldn’t ignore the national dish of Austria so Wiener schnitzel was always going to be on the menu.

That’s where mum stepped in with one of her pearls of wisdom (I must add it to the list).

Thou shall not fry meat right before thou has guests arriving!

No one likes to enter a room filled with the lingering scent of fried meat but nor does anyone enjoy a stale schnitzel. There was only one thing for it mum declared, she would have to cook it herself and then drop it over right before my party. Bless you mum.

Classic Aussie party pies

Prawn and avocado shots

Representing the Aussie contingent were mini meat pies (a party just ain’t a party without party pies) and mini prawn cocktails. I filled shot glasses with shredded lettuce, avocado, dill, added a dollop of mayo and wedged a fresh prawn on top.

My four-tiered tower of Aussie sweets

Representing the other end of the spectrum was my four-tiered homage to our sweet history, made with lamingtons, Iced VoVo’s, Tim Tams, Anzac biscuits and Caramelo Koalas. By the way, has anyone else noticed how flat the topping on Iced VoVo’s has become?

I also snuck in some of this new fandangled Vegemite chocolate – a salty-sweet concoction that polarised my guests. I don’t like Vegemite but I liked this chocolate – strange, no? Read More

The 10 best foodie habits I’ve learned from my mum

Posted on May 10, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

I’ve written about cooking with my yiayias but it’s time to give some credit to the generation I missed – my mum, inspired by today being mother’s day.

The thing is, I don’t have reams of photos of mum’s food because, well, it’s mum’s food. It’s delicious, reassuring and dependable which is precisely why I rarely think mid meal – ooh, better capture this. It’s not exotic, boundary-pushing or haute cuisine. And thank god for that. I love to chase that stuff when I travel around the world but nothing, but nothing beat’s mum’s cooking.

I don’t think I really appreciated how good mum’s cooking was until I was out in the world tasting other people’s cooking. Then the penny dropped. I’ve definitely taken some of my mum’s staple recipes on board but more than that, I think I’ve taken on a lot of her practical ways when it comes to the kitchen. Once I started thinking about her pearls of wisdom I couldn’t stop. For example:

1. When entertaining, estimate how much food you’ll need. Then double it.

A standard afternoon tea spread at mum’s place

You all know the legend of the Greek hostess who will always ply her guests with food. Well her name is Vicki and she’s my mum. And I have taken on the exact same practice. The upside is a week’s worth of leftovers. Plus when the guests have left, we have a habit of all congregating in the family room, with plates of cake in hand, swapping stories and gossip about what’s happened that day.

Mum’s prawn and avocado platter – we can never get enough

2. Make it look effortless

I don’t think my mum intentionally tries to make entertaining look effortless but that’s always the end result. The kitchen and dining room will be overflowing with handmade dishes, mezethes are doing the rounds and everyone will have a drink in hand. Oh and the house is spotless of course. Once I started hosting my own parties I realised just how much work is involved in all that. And my parties are small. Mum’s hosted parties for 100+. I think this is where her eagle eye English teacher skills of forward planning and strategising come into play and I always hope that I’m pulling it off half as well as she does.

3. Kids will believe anything

Like the time mum served us ‘crumbed chicken’ which we wolfed down hungrily. Then my brother made a joke about it kinda looking a bit like brains. Unfortunately mum can’t keep a straight face so the cat was out of the bag. I’m pretty sure my brother still doesn’t eat brains to this day. Moral of the story is, kids won’t know any better unless you tell them. And yes, I still eat brains.

Perfect turkey every year

4. When you’re on a good thing, roll with it.

This is what led to the artichoke and avocado salad era of the 80’s, the tiramisu times of the 90’s, the smoked salmon decade and the more recent mango mousse years. And that stretches into seasonal specialties like perfect roast turkey and ice-cream pudding at Christmas. Mum fine tunes a recipe and sticks with it, which means the requests come through thick and fast for said dish at family and friend gatherings.

5. The lunchbox is the key to a happy childhood

Sometimes I think wistfully about lunchbox days. When the most difficult decision of the day was – should I eat my Tiny Teddies for recess or save them lunch? Mum put a lot of effort into our school lunches and we usually had nice salad sandwiches or if she was super busy, devon and tomato sauce (which was our favourite back then – I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole now). Then there was the poppa that had been frozen from the night before so that by lunchtime it had defrosted to the perfect chilled temperature. Plus a piece of fruit and a miscellaneous snack. Lunchtimes have never been so much fun. Read More

Cocktail Shenanigans

Posted on May 4, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

A first class daiquiri from El Floridita, Havana

My last post was all about drinking food which segues nicely into the topic of drinking itself.

I adore cocktails. Literally love ‘em. It was quite convenient when I worked for a hospitality company that owned a dozen cocktail bars because drinking was technically work. Now it falls squarely back into the self-funded leisure category but that hasn’t dampened my spirits in the slightest.

It’s impossible to highlight all my cocktail shenanigans because there have been so very many. Plus I’m not always in a lucid enough state to remember them all. Thank god for iphones.

The bar at El Floridita in Havana

Possibly my greatest cocktail memory ever happened in Havana two years ago. After a painful 35 hour journey involving three stop overs and very little sleep, I arrived in Havana on a Saturday evening. En route to my hotel I spotted ‘El Floridita’ out of the corner of my eye and knew instantly my impending plans to sleep would be shafted.

Abel works his magic

”My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita”

noted the famous alcoholic, I mean author, Ernest Hemingway and who was I to argue? My new friend Lena and I got comfy at the bar and ended up spending hours there. The daiquiris were sensational – did I mention this is where they were invented?

The signature Floridita Daiquiri blends crushed ice, sugar, rum, lime and maraschino liqueur and the result is an intense frothy delight. They’re served with a bottomless plate of highly addictive plantain chips which create the perfect ballast to support all that rum. Read More

Drinking food that’s so wrong but oh so right

Posted on April 27, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Cheesy, greasy, salty poutine

I last wrote about lovely Greek Easter family traditions and cooking sessions with my yiayias. Honest, good clean fun.

Which is precisely why I’m now compelled to write about something down and dirty. To keep the balance.

Today it’s all about outrageous, positively indecent (and calorie-defying) drinking food. This idea came to me recently while I was drinking (alcoholic) ginger beer with a Canadian friend in a Canadian bar. There was only one thing to order in that situation.

‘One poutine please’.

If you think poutine sounds French, that’s because it is – or at least it hails from French speaking Quebec. Chunky fries are topped with brown gravy and cheese curds so the whole thing is a greasy, salty, cheesy mess. A pretty tasty mess to be fair.

Ginger beer to cut through the grease

According to my sidekick Ving, this was not poutine in its true form – partly because we just don’t make cheese curds in the same way the Canadians do. But he felt the sentiment was there. Apparently McDonald’s does a version in Canada – I’m not entirely confident about how that might taste.

Chips topped with gooey melted cheese

Poutine is pretty closely related to the cheesy chips that you see on pub menus far and wide throughout the UK. My favourite was a version I came across in Tresco (while snacking on scotch eggs naturally). Good old fashioned chips are drowned with melted cheese so there’s nothing sophisticated going on there but they certainly go down well when you’re drinking copious amounts of local cider.

Crispy, crunchy, chicharrones

While we’re on the topic of fried foods, it doesn’t get much more debaucherous that chicharrónes or fried pork rinds. That’s where they take something already extremely fatty and proceed to deep fry it to really amp up the fat factor. Sounds like something Homer Simpson would eat. Read More

Easter, the Greek way

Posted on April 8, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Red eggs for Greek Easter

Easter? But that was so last weekend right?

Not for the Greeks (and Serbians, Russians, Bulgarians and every other Orthodox religion out there).

We’re special so our Easter is a moveable feast. The date follows a modified Julian calendar which means it can sit up to a month before or after conventional Easter. Quite confusing when you’re small and marking the occasion before the hot cross buns have gone on sale in Woollies.

The lead up to Greek Easter (Lent) is a time of fasting. That means no meat, poultry, milk, cheese, eggs and fish with backbones. It’s a method for cleansing your body and soul (a precursor to the modern detox if you like).

To be honest, I was always more about the feast than the fast.

Tsoureki – photo courtesy of Martha Stewart Living

Forty days of fasting culminates in a 2am feast to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus – think magiritsa (offal-based soup that’s tastier than it sounds), tsoureki (brioche-esque sweet bread), avgolemono (egg-lemon chicken soup with rice) and of course, red eggs.

To be fair, fasting food is not to be sneered at. I completed the Easter-themed Kytherian Kitchen classes a few years ago and learnt how to make some exceptionally tasty traditional fasting dishes. Read More

Sunday cooking sessions with my yiayia

Posted on March 30, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Yemista or stuffed tomatoes

Whenever I stop fidgeting for five minutes, my favourite place to spend a Sunday is at my yiayia Maria’s house – eating, cooking, raiding her garden for herbs, eating, playing gin rummy and more eating. Her mission in life has always been to feed everyone around her and you only have to look at my mum, sister and I to see that it’s clearly an inherited trait.

Yiayia could make spanakopita with her eyes closed

For most of my youth I took it for granted that yiayia’s cooking always tasted exactly the same (i.e. delicious). It wasn’t until I started to notch up my own miles in the kitchen that I realised that kind of consistency is hard earned.

Spinach and cheese filling in the spanakopita

Of course I want my cooking to taste like yiayia’s right now so I’ve made a point of learning as much as I can from her over the years. Extracting a recipe is easier said than done though, and I have to watch her like a hawk to work out each step. She relies purely on sight and touch to know when something is perfect.

‘How much flour yiayia?’

‘Enough until the dough is ready Alexandramou’.

Of course yiayia!

A spanakopita of this size lasts roughly fifteen minutes in my family

Lucky for me we tend to focus on savoury dishes, so a little variation in quantity usually doesn’t spell disaster. Spanakopita (cheese and spinach pie), yemista (rice and meat stuffed tomatoes) and keftethes (meatballs) are always a good starting point. I wouldn’t dare go freestyle on kourabiethes! Read More

My cheesiest post yet

Posted on March 23, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Swedish ‘caramel’ cheese

No really. This will officially be my cheesiest post, based on weight of course.

Sure, I’ve covered raclette in depth, while other cheeses have popped up in random posts, but this time I’m going all out with a full dairy overload. Here are five very special cheeses that I haven’t stopped thinking about.

Oscypek display at a market in Krakow

Let’s start in Poland. I had read about oscypek – a protected smoked cheese from the Tatra Mountains, so it was on my radar. The cheese gods were clearly looking down on me on that trip because within ten minutes of alighting at Krakow train station, Maz and I stumbled across a food market with an entire stand dedicated to oscypek. Score!

This poor woman had to deal with oscypek groupies (i.e. us) every night

Made from salted sheep and cow milk, the cheese is formed into decorative shapes, brined and cured in hot smoke. Each little cheese is heated to order on the barbeque and served with a dollop of cranberry sauce.

Oscypek with cranberry jam – absolutely sensational

The sharp, salty, smoked ooziness of the cheese was sublime with the fruity tang of the cranberry. We loved it so much we had seconds that night and came back the following two nights. I think the lady at the stand thought we were a bit strange. This was a culinary highlight of the year and I’m on a mission to track it down in Sydney.

Romanian cheese display in Bran, just below Dracula’s castle

The award for the most bizarre looking cheese on the list would go to this Romanian beauty. The first time I spotted it in a market outside of Dracula’s ‘castle’, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was dealing with. Small pieces of fire wood? Bit odd to find that in the cheese display. Maybe a derivative of fresh coconut? But then it was winter in eastern Europe, not exactly a climate in which one would expect a tropical fruit. After a bit of investigation I discovered it was cheese in bark. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Read More

The day McDonald’s went hipster

Posted on March 16, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

The Corner café entrance

There’s nothing new about the McCafé.

But a McDonald’s hipster café serving quinoa, single origin coffee and serving it on chopping boards? That’s pretty ground breaking for this fast food giant.

The service area is sleek with bright yellow touches

It’s no secret that the traditional McDonald’s format has been losing fans over the years. No matter how many salads and yoghurt cups they introduce, it’s hard to see beyond two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

The extensive sweet selection

They had to do something drastic. And it seems that move was to turn a former McCafé in Sydney’s inner city suburb of Camperdown into a ‘learning lab’ – a testing ground for new dishes and service styles.

I’m not a Macca’s customer (unless it’s 3am, I’m hungry and it’s the only viable option) but this concept instantly piqued my interest. Plus I love the fact they chose Sydney to trial it, no doubt because we punch well above our weight in the hipster stakes.

A Sunday night recce was the perfect opportunity to scope it out; just me, my trusty friend Marty and a handful of harried nurses from the adjacent RPA Hospital.

I’ll bet everyone recognises that tiling….

The McDonald’s branding is so slight that if you blink, you’ll miss it. There’s just a small McCafé logo under the main entry sign and a few references in the menus. Although I think most people would recognise the distinctive light brown tiles in the kitchen (didn’t everyone take a tour of the kitchen during a McDonald’s children’s birthday party at some stage?).

Doggys are people too

The outdoor herb garden

At first glance all the hipster café signs are there; doggy parking, an outdoor herb garden and plenty of ‘super foods’ like quinoa and kale. Read More