7 Things I Like About This Week.
It’s time for some borrowed interest. Here are 7 fun, intriguing or useful things I’ve discovered just this week. They won’t all be of interest to you, so stop and explore what you like or move on.
1/ GREEN TOMATOES
It’s that funny time of year when tomatoes raise their little faces to the sky and go “WTF. Where’s the sun?” Unripened late summer tomatoes came to fame as the signature dish in the 1980s novel and 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. If you have some, don’t leave ’em for the possums. Here’s a recipe for crumbing and frying big fat slices of green tomato and shoving them in a burger, and plenty of other ideas besides.
Side note: I first ran this recipe in 2013 within one day of today’s date. Ha! Take that, climate change. Pic of Coopers Shoots green tomatoes courtesy of Honour (see no 2)
2/ CAFE BY DAY, WINE AND SALUMI BAR BY NIGHT.
This is just the right combination for now, so welcome to Honour, on the corner right next to Fleet in Brunswick Heads, one of my favourite happy places on the Northern Rivers. Anna Mortimer and Aymeric Albores met while working in restaurants in Paris, and bring a lovely European vibe to everything they do.
“We pour wine and plate up food that we want to enjoy ourselves” says Anna. “It's just me in the kitchen, and I go from Mullum market to menu every Friday”.
Anna is classically French-trained and makes her own charcuterie including terrines, rillettes, pates, salumi, etc. “We source interesting and hard-to-find natural wines and offer eight by the glass that change every week” she says.
The events surrounding last year’s lockdowns made them both realise that “you live and die by your loyal local customers”.
“While Bruns is becoming a popular tourist destination and weekender, it's important to remember as business owners that we're feeding our community” she says. “We opened our little salumi bar with some trepidation but I'm delighted to see that many of our traditional breakfast customers are loving stopping by for a pet nat and some charcuterie on the terrace.” Sounds like heaven.
3/ ROAD TRIPPIN’.
If you’re planning to hit the road in search of a foodie adventure, do your homework first. The Good Food team has kindly spilt the beans on their favourite happy places (mine is Bruns, obviously) across Victoria and New South Wales. There are some absolute gems in there from Port Fairy to the lower Central Coast, so go have fun.
4/ THE DARK KITCHEN.
Why are so many kitchens white? Let’s go dark instead. More kitchen porn here thanks to the talented Peter Fehrentz in Berlin.
5/ VITTLES
There are so many good newsletters happening at the moment, but the one that keeps knocking me out is Vittles, because of the way it has been set up with such integrity, and for its commitment to giving a statement to so many different voices in food. Take a look at the latest here, on the confluence of black music and food.
6/ REPURPOSING YOUR TINNED FISH OIL
I’ve been saving that smoky oil from my cans of smoked oysters forever – I even drizzle it over fresh oysters - but here are some more good ideas, courtesy of Eater.
7/ HOW TO JUGGLE DINNER
Circus Harmony, a youth circus program in St Louis has put together an interactive, digital cookbook that is so cute.
Recipes are from the families of students, and each recipe comes with a video of the kids doing circus stunts. One for anyone who has ever picked up three lemons from the kitchen bench and attempted to juggle. Thanks to Stained Page News from Texas, in which critic Paula Forbes gives free rein to her passion for cookbooks, for alerting me to this.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if there are any tips, recipes or ideas that you’d like to see.
Copyright © 2021 Jill Dupleix. All rights reserved. I live and work on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging.