Cooking Times

By Kate Fraser

In a salute to our increasing love affair with nostalgia, Kate Fraser has put together a beguiling collection of recipes and 'anecdotes' from the kitchens of a series of fictitious characters. Between them, these engaging men and women represent a retrospective view of New Zealand kitchens and culinary traditions. While the characters are fictitious, the recipes come from the author's family collection, updated to include modern ingredients, equipment and techniques.together they represent a culinary journey from the 1930s to the present day, documenting our changing tastes. We learn about hard times in the high country in the 1930s with Ettie, growing up in a 1940s village with Janet, see retirement through the eyes of May in the 50s, watch Rosemary grow up in the 60s and see Marion through her first dinner party. We turn vegetarian with Peter and Roz as they travel the world in the 70s, then we open a cordon bleu cafe with Barbara in the 1980s. Simon is a popular television chef in the 90s and we come full circle with Kate who joins the Slow Food Movement in 2000. While each is enchanting in its own right, together they combine to present a very tasty overview, in recipes and traditions, of the development of our national food culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Apr 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730445586

Kate Fraser

Kate Fraser is Food Editor for The Press in Christchurch, where she lives and works.She is an experienced chef and food stylist and does culinary consulting work for a variety of media. This is her first book and has arisen out of a popular feature she invented for her columns.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Cooking Times is a culinary journey through eight decades, recording New Zealand’s favourite ingredients, food tastes and cooking techniques. It begins in the years of the Depression, before World War Two—a time when many lives were undergoing huge changes—and ends in the first decade of the twenty-first century, also a time of great change.

In the late 1930s and 1940s, home cooking was altered forever when electricity and gas became widely available. Rationing during the war years forced home cooks to make do or find substitutes for the foodstuffs they were used to. Social life changed when roads were improved to cope with the growing use of cars and buses, and this enabled rural dwellers to travel to the cities. A demand for houses saw trades develop, and there was a shift in populations as more people sought work in the cities. Country towns shrank.

Men and women returning from war in Europe, North Africa and Asia brought home a broader range of experiences and new ways of cooking. Education and the war work experiences of women opened up possibilities for work beyond the home. Increased prosperity because of good prices for primary produce saw new foodstuffs being imported. And New Zealanders continued to travel and then come home with new skills and ideas as to how to improve their lifestyles.

Food is an important part of every culture. It reflects and affects many areas—from religious beliefs to health. Sharing food is the best way to celebrate family and friendships at occasions big and small. And, in the sharing, many tales emerge.

Cooking Times records the culinary experiences of different decades through the eyes of those who were there and in the words of those who could have been there. It is a work of fiction and, apart from my own memories, the characters are invented. I own, however, to using my own family’s experiences when necessary.

The recipes are true to their decade, but in the interests of better eating many have been altered slightly to incorporate modern ingredients, methods and machines. They are recipes I have made or thought about making since I began cooking in the 1950s. Prior to that decade, they are the recipes of my grandmother, aunt and mother.

Kate Fraser

January 2008

THE 1930s: ETTIE’S KITCHEN

A cook recalls the good times and bad times of the Depression years

Times were tough, especially for those with no job and a family to feed. But on a high-country sheep run—even though wool prices were low, rabbits were stripping the landscape of anything green, and there was no income to speak of—there was security: a sturdy house to keep out the harshest winter, wood for fuel, and plenty of food to be hunted, fished, reared and grown. It was a time when practical skills and common sense prevailed. It was a time for making do with what was available. And for sharing everything, no matter how small, with others.

WILLY and I moved to Clare Burn—a sheep run that stretched up a valley from the lakeshore—in the 1930s. Sadly, we left before any prosperity came our way. It was hard country, and a hard life, but we loved it.

I never went back. Willy was sick, then he died, and suddenly I was very old and lonely. I liked memories better than anything.

There is a red grass that grows along the road verges in the high country. It flowers all summer long and I loved its deep, sweet smell. That and the spicy clove fragrance of briar roses. There were lakeside smells of beech trees, bog myrtle and monkey musk, too, mixed in with the scents of the lilies and lupins from the garden.

There was nothing much at Clare Burn when we moved in. The house was originally a shepherd’s hut—one room, and a bit of lean-to we used for washing and cooking. Willy, with a neighbour to help, added one room at a time until we had a sitting room, two bedrooms and a large kitchen. Part of the kitchen always had its original dirt floor, but the dirt had a lot of mica in it and, as it was packed down hard—and I suppose it had been like that for 20 years or so before we moved in—it looked like polished wood. Or maybe marble, though I have never seen marble floors.

I hooked all the floor rugs myself. Everyone did. We gathered bits of sheep’s wool off the fences, and pulled rabbit fur from stinking green skins, spun everything into hanks, then knitted the hanks into strips. Then, just like a rag rug, the strips were hooked through sacking. Goal sacks, sugar bags, anything like that was useful. We never used wool sacks, though. They cost far too much.

The landscape was barren at first—rabbits and deer stripped the bush and bracken—but I planted hundreds of willows and larches. And we had an enormous garden. The soil was glacial silt, and with water and a good layer of manure it could grow anything. I added sheep dags to the mix of horse, cow, chook, pig and sheep droppings, and broke the soil into a fine tilth. We grew carrots, potatoes, beetroot, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, swedes, white turnips, marrows, cabbages, cauliflower, silver beet, spinach, beans, peas, asparagus, strawberries and lettuce. A sunny corner was for tomatoes, and the lot was surrounded by low berry hedges: gooseberries and red, white and black currants. I had apple, pear and quince trees, a cherry tree with sour fruit, and a row of plum trees, including one variety I dried and that Willy declared was better than any prune from Australia.

I had a large flower garden, too, and, even if I say it myself, my Christmas lilies were the best for miles around. The scent! I grew Canterbury bells in a big, half-moon-shaped garden, and once a man came and took a photograph of them for the Auckland Weekly.

There was no going to a shop or anything for plants. We sent off for seeds when we had a bit of spare money, but mostly I got seeds and plants from Granny. She was my father’s mother and had a grand reputation as a gardener, a cook, and a dairywoman. I had lived with her before Willy and I married. She had a sort of a hotel down-country. It had a bar and a dining room and a few bedrooms. It was built when a coach used to go over the Pass to the lakes district. Granny’s place was the coach stop and she always called it a hostelry (God help anyone who said ‘pub’). It had cooking and gardening. I had to help with the milking, too, but I hated that. You spend all your time dodging cowpats, especially fresh ones.

I was good with my hands and nothing was wasted. We never had any children of our own, but my brothers and sister had plenty to share, and every school holidays we had three or four young ones to stay. We had a sort of bunk room up by the wool shed for the shearers and they slept there, and in the summer Willy put up an old army tent he’d got from somewhere.

The bus drove up from down-country once a week. It was known as The Coach, as a hangover from the times when it really had been a horse and wagon. It brought up our mail, papers, store-bread, tyres, sheep dip, candles, kerosene, flour, tea, sausages and, occasionally, passengers.

We had no amenities really. No electricity, no water in the house, no flushing toilet. The lavatory was a long-drop, but it sat up on top of a wee rise and it was quite nice sitting up there on warm days looking a telephone bureau which I worked in, but she expected me to help everywhere, which meant I learnt a bit of everything, including over the lake to the grand hills. Not so good in the winter, though. When you wanted water at Clare Burn you went outside, pumped a handle up and down and eventually water gushed from the spout. The kitchen didn’t have taps but it had a huge tin sink and very large benches. And an oak gate-leg table that I loved. I polished it so hard with beeswax for so many years that it got a hollow in it. When it was opened up fully it was quite large, but when we had visitors for afternoon tea I folded it up and put a cloth over just the centre bit and it looked like a real tea table.

Afternoon tea was how we entertained. Family came for meals, but not neighbours. When they came visiting, it was in the afternoon around three o’clock. It was nothing to drive for a couple of hours, which meant you nearly always had to get going straight after dinner in the middle of the day. All of us made sure we had plenty in the tins to put on a good spread. I always had Dundee cake. Well it wasn’t really Dundee cake, just a big old boiled fruit cake I made for the shearers, but I decorated the afternoon-tea version with nuts in a whirly pattern. My cousin Goodheart loved my Dundee cake, but I know she wouldn’t have looked at it if she’d known the shearers got it as well.

Willy was from South Australia and he probably wasn’t the best farmer, but he was a real country man. He had been in a mounted rifle regiment in the Boer War and he could live off the land even if it was desert! He shot wild pig, chamois, tahr and big deer—12-pointers ruled those ranges—but merino mutton was our staple meat. He liked fishing and could always be counted on to bring in a fish if we had extra family for tea. He caught, or rather trapped, eels. Dirty, muddy, evil things, and I hated the way they’d slide into the traps to get the stinking meat. They’d get the scent and there’d be a rush and a lot of scummy froth. It made me sick. But Willy cooked them in the ashes of the outside fire so I never had to deal with that side.

Then there was rabbit. Wasn’t it lucky we all liked to eat rabbit, because there were thousands of them roaming the countryside eating anything green? We trapped them and shot them, ate the meat and sold the skins. My mother roasted rabbits in milk; my sister had a favourite recipe where she smothered rabbit pieces in mustard and gently fried them. I made rabbit soup, rabbit pie, rabbit fricassee, rabbit with plums, rabbit with onions, rabbit in white sauce, rabbit in brown sauce, rabbit wrapped in bacon and roasted.

We had pigs. There was always Big Pig and Little Pig. Big was slaughtered when he was two—and my word you didn’t want to be within hearing that day. Terrible squealing. Then a lot of boiling water and scrubbing, and dealing with those darn bristles. We salted some of the meat, made some into sausages, and smoked a lot of it. Willy cured our bacon. We shared the meat with the family down-country and with a neighbour, and I always thought it was a lot of work we were giving away. The pigs ate the scraps, but I would sooner have dug them into my vegetable garden—the scraps, that is, not the pigs.

It was a hand-to-mouth existence, but I don’t think any of our visitors ever realized it. We had lovely times sitting around the kitchen table in winter. A big fire in the hearth and good food are two of life’s greatest gifts, Willy used to say.

I liked summer. We mowed the lawns right down to the shores of the lake and put up a trestle table, made from planks of wood and three old drums, under the trees and ate out there nearly every mealtime. I don’t remember it ever raining or blowing, but I suppose it did.

Summer is a busy time on a high-country run, but autumn—after the muster—is lovely. Long, golden days, nights with a bit of nip, and food to be gathered everywhere. Rosehips, blackberries, crab apples, wild apples, mushrooms…Oh, we had wonderful meals at the lake.

BALMORAL VENISON

In the early part of the twentieth century many venison dishes displayed their Scottish heritage, not only in their ‘on the hob’ (over a low flame) cooking style, but by including a name that suggested that the beast within had once roamed the Highlands.

This recipe is based on the stews Ettie made with the tougher cuts of wild venison. The farmed venison we get today is milder and leaner and does not need such long, slow cooking. The venison in Ettie’s dish was wild and the flavours were stronger, and she used mutton fat to brown her meat and vegetables. I’ve used olive oil and butter. Red-currant jelly has been a favourite addition to meat, especially game, for many years. It adds a sweet piquancy.

650g venison steaks

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

1 large onion, diced

1 stalk celery, chopped small

1 carrot, diced

1 tablespoon flour

300ml meat stock

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons red-currant jelly

Cut meat into pieces as large as an egg. Heat a large ovenproof dish (casserole, tagine or frying pan) with a lid over medium heat and sear the venison each side. Remove and put aside. Reduce the heat to low, add the olive oil and butter, and cook vegetables until the onion is translucent and the carrots are tender. Add the flour to the pan and stir well to combine with the vegetables. Cook for a minute or two until the flour begins to brown. Slowly add the stock, stirring all the time. When the mixture has thickened (add more or less stock depending on the preferred thickness of sauce), taste and adjust salt and pepper if needed. Place the seared venison in the sauce, add the red-currant jelly and cover. Simmer gently until the meat is cooked through, taking care not to overcook. Serves 4–6.

WILD DUCK WITH GRAB APPLES

Ettie cooked with seasonal ingredients. She reasoned that if one ingredient in a recipe was at its best at that time of the year, it made sense to combine it with another ‘at its peak’ ingredient.

Wild ducks are lean, and they can be tough. By stuffing her ducks with tart crab apples, Ettie was tenderizing the flesh as well as adding a fruity note to the flavours; a similar combination to the famed recipe of duck breast with sour cherry sauce. I have added a cup of port to her recipe—it provides a sweetish contrast to the crab apples and it boosts the flavour of the jus.

2 wild ducks, dressed

(gutted and plucked)

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed

lemon juice (retain the

lemon halves)

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon each salt and pepper

2 cups (approx) destalked,

washed crab apples

oil (or lard) for browning

250ml port

1¹/2 cups stock or water

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Cut out the oil sacks—two small nodules at the tail end of the ducks. (Ducks use this oil to preen their feathers: if the sacks are not removed, they can give cooked duck a whiff of musky raincoat.) Rub a cut lemon around the duck cavities. Make a paste with the lemon juice, ground ginger, salt and pepper, and rub all over the ducks. Fill the cavities with the crab apples. Use a skewer to close the cavities, but not too tightly.

Heat the oil or lard in a large frypan. Brown the ducks lightly on all sides, then remove and place in a heavy casserole dish of such a size that the ducks are close to, but not actually touching, the sides of the dish or each other. Pour over the port and cover. Cook in the oven for 1-1¹/2 hours, basting with the juices two or three times during the cooking time. When the ducks are tender, remove and keep warm. Scrape off any sticky bits from the base of the casserole dish. Add any scrapings from the frying pan. Add the stock or water to the pan, incorporating roasting juices and simmer briskly until this jus is slightly reduced and syrupy. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. To serve, cut each duck in quarters. Serve with a spoonful of the soft but tart cooked crab apples and sauce. Good with roast yams (roast in a seperate oven dish) and steamed spinach. Serves 4-6.

RABBIT PIE

Chunky pieces of wild rabbit, combined with silky strands of leeks and carrots and a topping that is no more than a simple poultry stuffing, make a simple but gamey pie. It is a forgiving dish, and a jointed chicken can be substituted for rabbit.

2 rabbits, jointed

water

2 tablespoons lemon juice

3 carrots

2 onions, chopped roughly

a few sprigs of fresh parsley

and thyme

300-400ml chicken stock

(lighter than the mutton-bone

and vegetable

Reviews for Cooking Times

[refpenny · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As well as having interesting recipes this book is a great read. Each chapter features a particular decade and starts with the story of somone who was cooking during that time. The reminiscences brought back memories and were followed by a number of the recipes used.