The making of MARMALADE - kidstyle.

I have only ever made marmalade once in my culinary life, and it ended with me having to call a plumber because the residue from my rinsed out pans left such a thick goop in the drain, it needed a professional to unblock it! So, you can imagine my reservations when the lad asked me what he could cook with grapefruit? Should I suggest marmalade or pretend he never asked me? We have a lovely elderly neighbour, who has a very robust grapefruit tree growing in her backyard. Every year she gives it a very severe pruning in an attempt to keep it under control. It doesn't work as every year it comes back bushier than the last with big, yellow, fat grapefruit on it. She planted the tree around 30 years ago and has enjoyed many fruit over the years. Unfortunately she can no longer see the pips to eat them properly which is a travesty, but she is happy for others to enjoy the fruit and is very generous in sharing them. So, every year, we pick some fruit and juice them. I love grapefruit juice, and so does my husband, but the kids like the juicing process more than the flavour. However, this year, I decided to move forward from my less than positive experience last time, and get the kids involved in a batch of grapefruit marmalade..kid style! The first step was the planning. I had an old recipe, but thought I should try to find a more simple one on the internet that would suit the age group and skills of my "helpers". At 5 and 7 years, they are sometimes more hindrance than help, but I really want to encourage them to think about food and the processes it takes to get food on the table (or in this case, into a jar!). Both kids were GUNG-HO about picking the grapefruit so it was hard to hold them back and talk about recipes and what we should do. After my initial search, I found a great simple recipe on the Cooking Cache website. All I needed was 3 medium grapefruit, 2 medium lemons, 10 cups water and 10 cups of sugar. EEK! 10 cups of sugar!??? This in itself amazed the children, no wonder they love jams but neither of them had tried marmalade before so they were expecting something sweet and sticky after seeing how much sugar went in. It was a great surprise to them when they tasted the result (and highly entertaining for me to watch) to find it was still sour enough to make them squint. I guess they didn't think about the fact that if the fruit is sour, then the end result will be sour too? Funny. OK, so it was time to gather our baskets and visit Phyl to get permission to pick the fruit. She was tickled pink that we still wanted them, and she was also really pleased they weren't going to waste, not to mention that she would get some home made marmalade for her toast at the end of it all! She has always loved it and knew we would come through with a jar or two. What fun we had, picking the best fruit, trying to reach it, twisting it until it came off, and comparing the sizes we all had. When you considered some were the size of a baby's head, no wonder the kids had trouble balancing them while reaching high. It was like a comedy act, watching them drop, juggle and struggle with them, while straining to see the green bug we found on a leaf! So easily distracted. Back to the house to scrub the fruit. This is always important, but more so since we had recently had the worst dust storm since the 1930's! We set up the sink with water and scrubbing brushes. Both kids put to hard labour to get them squeaky clean. Then there was a squabble over who got the biggest knife to cut the fruit. We had to have our safety discussion at this point, because even though both children take the use of knives very seriously, there is always the danger of severed limbs, and that would certainly have interrupted the proceedings somewhat. I was so tempted to go over the slices and re-cut them to make them thinner, but thought that this is the kids marmalade after all and they should be able to feel proud of the fact that they did most of it themselves, so CHUNKY style marmalade it was to be. We got our biggest saucepan out and put the slices of fruit in. The first born was in charge of adding the water cup by cup. The lad was the fruit man. Everyone had an important job to do. Once that was done, we left the fruit overnight to soak. Because I work 3 days a week, this had to be timed on a day I knew I could boil the fruit the following morning. With all of the extra curricular activities, this was a feat in itself, but we managed. The next morning I packed the firstborn off to school, and the lad and I hurried home to begin the next step of our little project. We boiled the fruit with the lid on for about 45 minutes (until rind is soft). Then we measured the mixture, cup by cup. This is important as the usual idea is to mix 1 cup of suger per each cup of fruit mixture. We had 10, so the lad began the filling, tipping and counting of the sugar cups and made a pretty good mess of the kitchen floor in the process. Theres nothing quite like standing in a dust of sugar, crunching and sticking with each step while trying to concentrate on BOILING hot liquid! I guess that's what cooking kid-style is all about (!?). We stirred it over the heat, without boiling, until the sugar was dissoved. Then we brought it to the boil, uncovered, without stirring for about 15 minutes (or until marmalade gels when tested. I'm not sure what happened here, but mine took much longer to gel. I'm thinking that the removing of the seeds (even though the recipe said to earlier in the process) left me without enough pectin? Who knows, but we boiled for longer. There is a few ways to test the gel point of jams, we used the cold plate method. I find it all a bit open-ended, so I've recently bought a new thermometer from Victoria's basement to help me on my next quest. This takes the worry out of the process. We had washed and steralized the jars after we hurriedly did a ring around of the neighbours and friends to GATHER them. Once the lad gets an idea in his head, we have to put it into action pronto so, the call went out, and in no time we had an interesting assortment of jars for our marmalade. We put them in the oven just before it was time to jar up, and we had just enough for the amount of mixture. I did this part as the mixture is SCALDINGLY hot, so there was no way I was letting the lad near the pan. I'm currently sporting a scald on my arm from my tea kettle, so I can't even be trusted with hot things about. He loved watching it gloop into the jars, and we let them cool before wiping them down. Once the first born arrived home from school, we made some labels and lid covers and had fun deciding who would be worthy recipients of our marvellous marmalade. After the official tasting (and the decision that they loved making it but don't like the taste), we farmed jars off to our generous neighbour, one jar went to pre-school for the kids to taste, to the school teacher, to Ya Ya (who promptly marinated chicken wings in it and said they were scrupmtious!), to our friends and family. It was a great experience, and one well worth doing. The kids both learned a bit more about food and the sugar content, and I got some ripper, flavoursome marmalade for my morning toast! Happy days. Happi eating!

The launch of "I ATE MY WAY THROUGH SINGAPORE AND VIETNAM"

The second I heard that magnificent clap of thunder, I knew all wasn't going to go my way! What a rain storm! After a hot and humid day, something had to give, and the heavens did in fine style. Of course, this was lovely, but as I made my way through crowded city streets at peak hour, I wasn't so pleased about mother nature's intervention. I was on my way last night to the book launch of fellow food-blogger "Jenius'" at the Global Gallery in Paddington. I cursed my open sandals as I sloshed through puddles, and hurriedly snapped up a new umbrella at the 7-eleven on my way to the bus stop. As I arrived, I realised that at peak hour, you needed to pre-pay, so back I sloshed to the 7-eleven to buy my ticket. My prediction was beginning to come true. Finally, back I went and found a bus that I thought was on my route, but of course I had run out of the office in a cloud of perfume and had left the all-important travel details on my desk! Happily I sms'd my fellow blogger YaYa so we could track our progress towards the gallery but I didn't realise the bus had taken a right turn and was heading off towards the showground! EEK?! As it was getting dark, and very very wet, I decided to stay on the bus until I reached a safe spot....hello Royal Randwick. Hmmm....20 stressful minutes later, a taxi finally slowed down and finally took me to Paddington (I DID have to look up Comber Street in the directory for him, but he was so soothingly calm, I wasn't worried that he may well have NO IDEA of where I was going. I couldn't complain really as neither did I?). As we backtracked, I tried to salvage my hairstyle and now falling apart sandals so I could at least walk in to the launch with a modicum of dignity. It really wasn't the entrance I had hoped for, but once I arrived, the cosy little crowded gallery was so welcoming, and the cute little boy (who we found out later in the night was Jennifer's younger brother) shyly pushed a colourful flyer into my hand and I found myself with a big smile and a change of demeanour. My next mission was to find YaYa, my partner in crime, in the crowd. Not exactly easy as she is quite vertically challenged (tee hee he..sorry YaYa). After quickly perusing the crowd, I squished across the room towards the drinks waiter, and found her in animated conversation with the delightful owner of Saigon Saigon Restaurant and her equally delightful sister who was the "hired help" for the night, gathering business cards, spreading the word about Saigon Saigon, and making sure we all got to sample the food as it came out of the kitchen. It was really tasty and was practically INHALED the second it exited the kitchen, so you had to be quick. What fun it all was, and what nice people we connected with tonight. So, now I had found YaYa, next was a quick chat to the author herself, the lovely Jennifer Lam. What a sweet girl she was, totally unaffected by the hoo-hah of the launch in her honour. She does a great blog, is a gifted photographer and is very obviously well grounded. All this talent, and still able to chat to strangers and friends, followers and family with grace. Tonight she was launching her book "I ate my way through Singapore and Vietnam", the first in a series of delectable food inspired books. Although Australian born, Jennifer has family connections with Vietnam, and it was on a trip there she became inspired to put this book together. I'm glad she did. It's bright, beautiful, interesting, and desirable (Jennifer tells us emphatically that it isn't a coffee table book, but a bed side table book as she lovingly hugs a copy to her chest) and the most fabulous thing is that a percentage of the sales of each book goes directly to KOTO International. KOTO is a non profit organisation that assists street kids in Vietnam to better their chances in life by giving them skills in the hospitality industry. The cause has surpassed its original goals and is now placing kids in scholarships around Australia. A quick chat with Lorette Brown, a director of KOTO gave us insight into what KOTO do, and it is a great tribute to Jennifer that she feels she can give something back to the country she feels she gained so much from. During her speech, Jennifer told of her supportive family and partner, of her food inspirations, and spoke passionately about KOTO. Her younger brother was both reticent yet intrigued by all the photos being taken, so it was quite entertaining to see him handing out the books while trying to hide behind them! It was not only a fun evening, but an inspiring one too. Once we secured our copy of the book ($49.95) and had it signed, it was time to concentrate on capturing the event. Trays of Saigon Saigon finger food emerged from the kitchen. We enjoyed deep fried spring rolls, prawns in wonton skins and delicious summer rolls. All extremely appetising! Saigon Saigon has been in Glebe for many years, and has recently been refurbished and enlarged. I, for one, am looking forward to visiting and will definitely be taking my fellow bloggers with me. I snaffled a takeaway menu, and plan to work my way through the mains with my foodie friends in the not too distant future. By this time, the crowd had thinned a bit, leaving some breathing room in the hot and sticky rooms. We had a chance to look at the art for sale (large format photos from Jennifer's book available for $250), and enjoy the wines on offer. Another sponsor of the night was Aja (pronounced Asia) wines which were specifically blended to work well with Asian food. Well, it was my absolute DUTY to try both the blush and the white. Both were great and the waiters were very accommodating being students from a hospitality college. Soon, it was time to go, and we reluctantly left the crowd spilling on to the street to make our way along Oxford street on our way home. Thankfully our trip home was less "interesting" than my trip in and we enjoyed soaking in the glossy pages of the book all the way home. Best of luck to Jennifer, I am sure with the solid support team you have behind you, all good things will come to you. Happi Eating!

FOOK YUEN SEAFOOD RESTAURANT - Chatswood

What better way to clear the cobwebs after a long meeting than Yum Cha for lunch? As mentioned before, I work with quite a few dedicated foodies in my office and we are known to regularly frequent our local Chinese Seafood Restaurant Fook Yuen in Help Street, for Yum Cha. Today we were gathered for a rather important meeting, and the second it finished, the shout out for yu cha was met with great enthusiasm. Fook Yuen is a huge and bustling local Chinese restaurant that has been reviewed in the past as being one of the more popular yum cha eateries in Sydney along with Chequers (also at Chatswood - in the Mandarin Centre), it is always busy and full but the turnover of tables is fast and furious so you can usually managed to get a table if you haven't pre-booked. The restaurant must seat literally hundreds in the main area and has private rooms that you can book for functions. I think that half the fun of the place is watching the action, and and trying to make your conversation heard over the noise! Trolly Dolly's doing their best to offload their steaming baskets of freshly made morsels then stamping your card with fervour (and more noise!). The comedy of the speedy hostess throwing down plates and clattering bowls on top, whilst balancing a pot of steaming tea in the other hand, all while keeping an eye on the punters at the other tables to see if any assistance is needed. I can't say that I've had a bad meal here in the 4 years I've been coming, but in our group we certainly all have our favourites and don't vary much from that. I have to be honest and don't know the names of the dishes (perhaps I should do some research for fun) but we regularly have the Roast Duck, BBQ Pork (trying to pick up the cashews with the chopsticks is always a fun challenge), steamed greens with oyster sauce, usually choi sum. Steamed pork buns are not one of our regulars, but do make an appearance now and then. Deep fried chilli squid is ALWAYS included - sometimes two serves (well..we usually have up to 10 at the table!), fried dim sims with vegies, and/or shrimp, rice noodle with prawn, dumplings with beef, pork or shrimp. The variety is endless and there is something that suits all of us. Some of the group are non green eaters, some are non wheat eaters, others will eat aything (err..I think that's me)...except the chickens feet. Some have tried them, some have not, but none of us really can be bothered with them. Once we have given the lazy susan a good workout, and the plates are all empty and multiple pots of tea have been drunk, it is usually time for the mango pancakes and egg tarts! Today however, none of us had time or space, but these are some of the most fresh and tasty we have all had and are usually anticipated throughout the meal. Fook Yuen is located on Level 1, 7 Help Street 9413 2688. It is easy to find, and find it you should. We usually end up leaving full as a googie for the grand old pices of $!7 per head. Sometimes we hit $19 (probably those dessert days), but it is ALWAYS under $20. Good food and good fun. Happi eating!