Artichoke, pimento, jamon and frozen pea salad. What junk food is not

Just around the corner from me is a fabulous Spanish / Latin grocery store. It is packed with all kinds of goodies imported from Spain, Portugal and South America. Tuna and sardines, anchovies, jars of artichokes in oil and tinned hearts-of-palm. Chorizo and legs of acorn-fed jamon hang from the ceiling. There are bags of arroz and sacks of gabanzo beans. Vats of olives and litres of olive oil. Paella tins and dozens of varieties of dried chillies and spices.

Dried and bottled and salted and cured and frozen and vinegared Iberican abundance. Making dinner a matter of throwing together a random selection of whatever catches the eye.

Is there a difference between my colourful Spanish salad and a Krispy Kreme doughnut or KFC?

When does the act of preparing a meal become home-cooking? When does food become processed? And when does food become junk food? And why junk? Why a word connoting such worthlessness?

‘Junk food’ continually appears as a culprit in public debate. From banning the sale of toys with Happy Meals to government mandated standards for the food in school canteens to lobby groups opposing the advertising of ‘junk food’ during prime-time children’s television to public health studies and nutritionalist advice: junk food is a core concept in the contemporary public debate about food.

Junk food is shorthand. It’s used to describe everything from production to consumption practices, method of processing, readiness of availability, caloric content and nutritional value (or valuelessness), (high) percentage fat/sugar, (un)naturalness, cheapness, and social context. All terms and concepts themselves that themselves are difficult to pin down and already laden with all kinds of assumptions about what is good and bad food.

Beyond this is a debate that too quickly seems to be shorthand for blaming someone. Blaming governments. Blaming the media. Blaming big corporations. Blaming society. Blaming parents. Blaming us. And then judging.

Rather than focusing on an item of food in terms of its health outcomes or nutritional inputs or even consumption context (all of which are important), I think junk food is perhaps something we can think about as our broad relationship to eating. Food does not, inherently, have a quality of junk or not-junk. But our broad approach to eating may turn our consumption practices in ones that are more or less valued by us and valuable to us. That is, the way we eat, the way we think about food, nutrition, sustenance, satisfaction, contentment, fulfilment, pleasure and flavour may position food as worthless and junk-ful or as valuable. So for me, junk food is thoughtless, mindless, directionless, irresponsible eating. It is eating that fails to take into account the singularity of eating this thing, here and now, as a unique and unrepeatable experience.

My salad may have too high a quantity of sodium or oil or fat. It may inhibit or replace my ability or willingness to ensure I have, that day, met my recommended daily intake of certain essential vitamins and minerals, fibres or proteins. It may be primarily pre-prepared.

But it makes me think of Spain. And I shared it with people I love. And I chose the items with a sense of wonder. The act of eating is also an act of ritual: the table was set and the time we ate was time set aside for eating together. It may not be healthy, but it is not junk.



Artichoke, pimento, jamon and frozen pea salad.

Serves 2 as a main meal

1 red onion, finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup frozen peas, blanched and refreshed (of course, you could blanch fresh ones)
1 jar of roasted pimento in oil, drained, finely sliced, oil reserved (or you could roast your own capsicum – you’ll need two)
1 jar artichoke hearts in oil, drained and quartered
100 gm thinly sliced jamon, torn into strips
1 tbsp Spanish sherry vinegar or lemon juice

Heat a tablespoon of reserved oil in a fry pan. Add garlic and onion and sauté over a medium heat until soft. Add peas and toss until warmed through.

Remove from heat, toss through the remaining ingredients and vinegar.

Serve with crusty bread.

Jack and the beanstalk (warm bean salad)

Beans and peas are so ubiquitous that it can be hard to think of them as anything special. That is in fact a driving narrative force in the whole Jack and the Beanstalk story. His mum dismissed those beans and tossed them out the window. The rest is history (or fairytale). Beans, I believe are valourised by this story.* Same goes for peas, cf: The Princess and the Pea.

Beans are magic.

Broadbeans, green beans, peas and sugar-snaps, butter beans. And purple-pink speckled borlotti beans.** All freshly podded or top-and-tailed or de-stringed, according to phylum-order-family-genus-species.

Sweet and crunchy and soft and earthy, fresh legumes are one of the luxuries of spring, a verdant and humble apology for a winter’s age of dried pulses.

* Yeah, ok, arguably the beans are only vindicated by virtue of the access they provided to the golden goose or whatever was at the top of the beanstalk. The moral of the story, to my rather myopic view, is: vegetables are really, really good.

** Tragically, they lose their spots when cooked. And they must be cooked, for at least ten minutes or they might kill you. See magic. Seriously - some beans contain quanities of a lectin called phytohaemagglutinin, which can be quite harmful to humans. Cooking reduces the harmfulfulness. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytohaemagglutinin

Warm spring bean salad

Serves 2

300 gm (unshelled) fresh borlotti beans (you should be left with about 100 gm of shelled beans)
300 gm (unshelled) fresh broad beans (you should be left with about 100 gm of shelled beans)
200 gm (unshelled) fresh peas-in-the-pod
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 5 cm lengths
100 gm green beans, cut into 5 cm lengths (or use a mix of butter beans and green beans)
2 tbsp olive oil
½ Spanish onion, finely diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tbps finely chopped parsley
Celery salt (or plain sea salt)
100g Soft goats cheese or curd or a goat’s milk fetta cheese.

Shell the borlotti beans. Boil in salted water for about 15 to 20 minutes, until tender but not mushy. Drain and reserve.

Shell the broad beans. Blanch in boiling water for about two minutes. Strain and remove the pale skins to reveal the bright green beans. Set aside with the borlotti beans.

Blanch the peas and beans for about three minutes, until just cooked. Strain and set aside with the other beans.

In a large fry pan, heat the olive oil and sauté the onions and garlic on a medium heat until translucent. Add the asparagus and cook for about three minutes or until the asparagus is just cooked through (but still has a nice crunch). Add the reserved vegetables, the parsley and celery salt and toss until all the vegetable are combined and warm through.

Serve with crumbled goats cheese.

Mung beans and whole grains

I recently saw a picture in a magazine of toasted whole wheat with a slow cooked egg yolk. Something about the dark crunchiness of the wheat appealed – I could imagine it’s dense, chewy texture, subtly enhanced with the rich gooeyness of the egg yolk. It looked simple. Basic. Impossible to tell, from the picture, if it was enhanced with something extravagant like truffle oil or handpicked wild micro-herbs. No recipe, just a picture amongst many pictures.

Whole-gains seem the terrain of hippies and health nuts, the food of anaemic and fashionable vegans and ultra-fit protein obsessed gym junkies. It sounds like a diet, or an extreme life-style choice. Which immediately conjures a sense of deprivation. Dieting seems to evoke a sense of loss of more than just weight. A world without sugar and fat and carbs and sweets and treats. A world without flavour. A world of rabbit food and cardboard tasting meal-substitutes.

And in all honesty, at the end of a winter that I dealt with primarily through laziness and comfort food, a reassessment of the healthiness of what I eat is probably called for. Not ‘a diet’, not a fad or a quick fix. Just a subtle realignment, now that my hostility to the season can be set aside for another year.

But there is something about toasted unprocessed whole grains, nutty and caramel, crisp and yielding, with a taste like the smell of cooking toast, that is homey and satisfying and comforting. On close inspection, toasted grains have nothing in common with deprivation. Despite the indisputable health and environmental benefits, whole grains are an unexpected treat, and now, more than a little bit high-end. Hence their appearance in a glossy magazine devoted to the valorisation of the chef’s arts.

I could have gone out and bought some farro, the oh so cool grain of the moment, some kind of ancient and original variety of wheat. Or whole wheat kernals. Or mixed red and black quinoa with onions and garlic and spinach. But I have barley in the pantry, set aside for adding to rustic soups. And what better to match it with than mung beans, that other shared bastion of the hug-the-earth-cum-health-kick movement?

There is something so terribly retro about mung beans. Reserved for the super-health conscious and hippies, they’ve hung around in health food shops and food co-ops with an endless seventies vibe, kind of overlooked and forgotten.

With English mint and plenty of salt, this was fresh and earthy, and a little bit pretty. And ridiculously healthy.

Toasted barley and mung bean salad

Serves two

½ cup pearl barley
1 cup mixed bean shoots (ie, mung beans, pea shoots, chickpea shoots)
¼ cup fresh peas
½ cup torn mint leaves
½ cup snow pea shoots (green part only)
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts
1 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
Sea salt
Pepper


In a large non stick fry pan heat the barley over a medium heat, shaking the pan or stirring to prevent the barley from burning. When the barely is a deep golden colour, add two cups of water or stock and lower the heat. Simmer for about half an hour, until the barley is soft and chewy (and most of the liquid is evaporated. Strain and add to a large bowl.

Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil, add peas and cook for about 5 minutes. In the last minute of cooking, add the mixed mung beans, just to soften a little. Add to the bowl with the barley and remaining ingredients and toss to combine. Season with salt and pepper.

Gnocchi: like it or lump it

The first time I made gnocchi was a disaster. Wanting desperately to impress a potato-mad paramour, I was left with a disintegrating collection of potato flavoured lumps. To be fair, this is what also happened the first time someone tried to make me gnocchi – a chef, and admittedly a very good one, that I happened to date, sought to impress me with the delicate Italian potato dumpling, and proceeded to produce a glue-textured and glue-flavoured bite-seized failure. (The idea behind that, however, was genius: cooked, and then pan-seared with pan-sweated baby spring-vegetables and French butter – it would have been delicious). Turned out as badly as the romance.

I have attempted gnocchi with and without eggs, flour, ricotta, all to varying degrees of failure.

Until recently I was taught, under pressure conditions, by a master*. And managed to produce something that was both flavourful and beautifully chewy with a light consistency. Turns out you have to fail a few times to get a real feel for the dough. So I tried again, with a recipe from a magazine** (which, as usual, I neglected to read correctly, and omitted the egg) – and succeeded in producing light, fluffy and sticky gnocchi that held their shape and absorbed the surrounding flavours.

And then again, mid week, capitalising on my success, I just whipped up gnocchi with caramelised bitter radicchio and peas and vanilla-and-rose-tea-smoked smoked duck. If I sound a wee bit cocky it’s because of the series of failures (romantic and otherwise) that preceded the triumph.

Moisture is the enemy: all the times I have succeeded, the potatoes have been individually wrapped in foil and oven roasted in their skins. I have pressed the potato through a sieve, without mashing (I do not have a ricer). I have kneaded lightly whilst still warm. I have not used eggs, I have not added liquid. I have been serious about avoiding overworking the potato so as to not stretch the starches too much. I have cooked in boiling water, at first one, tested and tasted, and then the remainder, whilst will slightly warm and soft. I have drizzled with olive oil and cooled, and then pan seared in olive oil and butter until slightly caramelised and hot again. I have snuck mouthfuls of just-cooked gnocchi, spinkled with sea salt, as a pre-dinner snack (quality control!).

Apparently, in Italian, the word gnocchi means ‘lumps’, which at once both accurately describes and deflates this incredibly fickle dumpling. I love their rustic lumpiness, their unevenness and general lack of elegance. And yet, when well-made, there is a velvetness, a simplicity that speaks to the richness of clay and the superiority of learned technique. So sublime a goal, I know I have many more years of romance and practice ahead to master the lump.

* Thank you, Matt Moran. You are a bald genius.
** Australian Gourmet Traveller, Annual Cookbook 2010

Gnocchi

Serves 4

2 medium sized potatoes, approximately 300 g total
150 gm full fat ricotta cheese
50 g finely grated parmesan cheese
120 g plain flour
Sea salt, optional, to taste.

Pre heat oven to 180ºc. Wrap each potato separately in foil, bake in oven for approximately 45 minutes, or until cooked through. Remove from oven and set aside until just cool enough to handle.

Peel potato and press through a metal sieve. Press ricotta through the sieve, add flour and parmesan, (and salt if using) and mix together with hands until just combined.

Cut into four pieces. Working with one piece at a time, roll into a long sausage shape until approximately ½ inch diameter. Cut into 1 inch lengths, pinch slightly. Repeat with remaining peices.

To cook – add batches of gnocchi to rapidly boiling water. The gnocchi will sink to the bottom. As the pieces rise to the surface, remove with a slotted spoon and set aside on a lightly oiled tray.


You can eat then like this – just add sea salt, cracked pepper and little grated parmesan. Or ...

Sauté one finely sliced onion, two crushed cloves of garlic and one finely minced chilli in a little olive over a medium heat until caramelised. Turn heat to high, add 1 small head of torn raddichio and 1 cup of steamed peas and cook for about 5 minutes until soft. Add 50 g butter, melt until foaming. Add cooked gnocchi and cook, tossing pan occasionally, for 3 ish minutes, until caramelised and warm. Serve, with or without smoked duck.