Italian chef Stefano de Pieri talks cucina rustica

October 10, 2009 helen

Ready for a mouth-watering meander? Italian chef Stefano de Pieri whisks us down the Murray River to share his fresh and flavoursome food in LifeStyle Food’s Stefano’s Cooking Paradiso – and he spills the beans on the ultimate cheat’s chocolate cake recipe, too.

You’ve been living in Mildura in Victoria for close to 20 years, what do you love about the place?

This place is an inland oasis of great beauty. We have the most extraordinary sunsets, and sunrises that take your breath away.

The region is renowned for its produce, what are some of your favourites?

I’m a big fan of our Murray River salt flakes. They look fantastic and turn eating a simple ripe tomato into a memorable experience. I also enjoy the wide variety of citrus that comes out of our area. I’m fond of blood oranges and mandarins.

What kind of cooking will you be sharing in Stefano’s Cooking Paradiso?

My food’s what I’d call “cucina rustica” [simple, country cooking]. It makes the most of good ingredients and doesn’t play with them too much. Most dishes viewers can do at home, even though I’ll be cooking a lot of them in a very romantic wood-fired oven.

Do you have any simple tips for home cooks?

I find that in general, Australians haven’t quite grasped how wonderful it is to cook with extra virgin olive oil. So, get hold of the best olive oil from your local producer and don’t be shy when pouring it over your food, even after the food has been cooked.

Stefano de Pieri’s Olive Oil Chocolate Cake

This is an amazing cake for cheats. The oil keeps it moist, but instead of real chocolate you use drinking chocolate. Preparation time: 15 minutes Cooking time: 20-30 minutes Serves10

INGREDIENTS

7 eggs, separated 1 cup castor (superfine) sugar 125ml extra virgin olive oil 1 cup self-raising flour, sifted 1 3/4 cups drinking chocolate (not cocoa), sifted 125ml (1/2 cup) warm water 1/4 cup sugar when beating egg whites

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 180o C (350o f) Beat egg yolks with castor sugar until fluffy. If the mixture tends to be thick, add 1 tablespoon of warm water. This will help the mixture turn fluffy again. With the beater on medium speed add the olive oil, bit by bit, like making mayonnaise. Add dry ingredients to the mixture on low speed and beat until all combined. Add the water. Whip the egg whites until thick, add the sugar and beat until it dissolves. Pour chocolate mixture into a large bowl and gently but swiftly fold in the egg whites. When well combined pour into a greased 23cm cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until cooked.

This article first appeared in OPTUS magazine, October 2009

reviews

New Theatre: Brand Spanking New Week Two

October 9, 2009 helen

Brand Spanking New festival director and self-proclaimed “talent truffle pig” Augusta Supple has done it again with another gobsmackingly good line-up for week two of this must-see short theatre festival. While week one presented various delights of a consistently good standard, this time around it’s a selection that aims to push our buttons and stretch the boundaries of the format. It both succeeds and fails in parts, but that’s the point really isn’t it of theatre? There’s not much point pushing the boat out if you’re not prepared to get wet.Within the eight plays on the night there’s a huge range of meaty characters and scenarios on offer; from xenophobic checkout chicks to silly self-help gurus, lofty proposals and adult fairytales, even Frankenstein-like monsters and souls adrift both literally and metaphorically. Each play is as different as you could hope to have, and it goes to show that there really is an abundance of ripe and unique playwriting talent alive and kicking in the Sydney scene.

Right from the opening tableau, which features the entire cast onstage preoccupied in a rhythmic reading and scrunching of paper to the dreamy yet playful score of composer Catherine Robinson, we know that this a theatre experience that is bigger than the sum of its parts. There’s a unity to it that’s reinforced byPaul Matthews inspired set design, a compartmentalised structure of fantasy-like filing cabinets stuffed with reams of paper, which brings to mind both the intangible and unconscious landscape of thoughts and ideas as well as the very concrete nature of the writing process itself.

Through the course of the evening we get to embrace the myriad of guises a small play can take. There’s the monologues, Self Service and White Wedding which engage us directly with their passionate protagonists, the three-handers The Bermuda Love Triangle and Lone Bird, which demand we take sides; and of course the tense intimacy of the two-handers, if i could be anything i would be something different, Polly Pocket is Not a Princess andKing of the Mountain. Rather than being a limitation we discover that the short play can be quite a liberating fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of thing where anything and everything can plausibly happen. Of course, that’s an illusion though really, because it takes a great degree of skill to make this kind of elasticity seem effortless, and the majority of the playwrights here have it in spades.

Notable mentions for the night must go to Mary Rachel Brown for her beautifully observed understanding of the entrenched racism in the Australian psyche in Self Service, delivered with charming wit and brave realism byChristine Greenough; to Maxine Mellor for her naughty, inventive and playfully fun Polly Pocket is Not a Princessin which Mairead Berne shines as a evil bitch Barbie who deserves a good roasting. And, to the absolute showstopper of the night, Lone Bird by Verity Laughton, who is clearly quite the master of the craft, blowing us away with her deft and fluid ability to create a psychologically thrilling encounter all with the minimal number of brushstrokes. It’s greatly enhanced too by wonderful performances from Tim Allen as the sinister ferryman Stan andFiona Press as Susan, one of his hapless passengers.

All in all, Brand Spanking New week two is a resounding success both for the industry and audiences alike, and judging by its sell-out opening night you really should be getting on the phone to the New Theatre right now if you want to catch it before the week is out!

New Theatre presents
Brand Spanking New

Week One 30 September – 3 October 2009
Week Two 7 – 10 October 2009

Venue: New Theatre | 542 King Street Newtown NSW
Times: Wednesday – Saturday @ 8pm
Tickets: $22
Bookings: 1300 306 776 | www.mca-tix.com.au
Visit: newtheatre.org.au

This review first appeared on Australian Stage October 2009

articles

Kitchen queen Margaret Fulton turns 85

October 5, 2009 helen

She was the first Aussie food writer who dared us to be different. We catch up with the delightful doyenne of Australian cooking, Margaret Fulton, as The lifeStyle Channel assembles an all-star cast to celebrate her 85th birthday.

What was it like looking back on your life for a show like this?

When I look back the only thing I remember is that when I started doing food everyone thought I was crazy.

Obviously you didn’t have celebrity superstar chefs back then…

Oh, heavens no! It was a totally different world. It was during the war, so all the girls I knew wanted to get a nice American who would give them silk stockings and get married.

So why do you think you were different to them?

I think I was a sort of a funny person in that I often went against the grain. My mother was very supportive and I just found that it was fascinating doing this, doing food.

What caused Australian food tastes to move on from the traditional meat and three veg?

During the Second World War, women started working in factories. You know, you might be canning peaches and there would be a lovely Italian girl next to you who was also canning peaches [laughs] and the Italians would say, “What are you having for dinner tonight?” And they’d be having exciting things, and the [Australian’s would think], “Oh why can’t I cook that for dinner?”

So Australian women were ready for something new?

Yes! We come from adventurous stock. You see, things like this didn’t happen in America and didn’t happen in England. Communities are still cooking the way they’ve always cooked. They haven’t absorbed other methods of cooking, whereas in Australia we’re a sort of a give-it-a-go country.

What excites you about Australian cooking today?

I thought that Masterchef was marvellous. My cardiac specialist has put in a kitchen and he wanted a steamer and he wanted this and that and I kept thinking, “Why don’t you stick to what you know?” [laughs]. And that’s what pleases me more than what the chefs in different restaurants are doing; the fact that the Australian public are doing this, that professional people in other fields are turning to cooking.

This article first appeared in OPTUS magazine, October 2009

reviews

New Theatre: Brand Spanking New Week One

October 1, 2009 helen

For those who like their theatre fresh, tasty and bite-sized there’s plenty to love about this year’s season of Brand Spanking New. Now in its second year, this two-week festival of short theatre which aims to showcase the best new works by emerging and established Aussie playwrights has hit its stride. Festival directorAugusta Supple has out done herself, assembling a rich and varied smorgasbord of dramatic delights for week one that are sure to have you giggling and gripped in equal amounts.There’s Homemade, a witty and at times poignant monologue on family, loss and sausage rolls from accomplished writer Vanessa Bates. It’s delivered with a nice sense of timing and sensitivity byJane Phegan, who holds the audience utterly captive for the duration of the piece.

Next there’s Matt Lauer a super-sharp rip-snorter by Rick Viedewhich focuses on a teenage boy’s obsession with the real-life host of NBC America’s Today Show. It’s a deviously dark piece of cultural comedy that takes aim at society’s sycophantic relationship with celebrity. Actor Julian Lovick is intense, strong and utterly hilarious as the boy, who lives his life according to the values he’s gleaned from his TV idol.

Fit For A King is a kind of oddball comedy from Scottish playwrightPhil Spencer, about three wacky inmates who pass the time by playing a gastronomic game of food guessing. It’s punchy in a Tarantino meets Peter Greenaway in a street fight kind of a way – i.e. the thugs are very clever and chatty, but you’re not sure whether you’re dreaming or awake.

Tamara Asmar’s Queen of The Night is a brilliantly written two-hander about an encounter between an aging prostitute and a stitched-up female ‘John’. What starts out as a ballsy sex comedy with Queenie (Abi Rayment) detailing her “bedroom degustation” menu soon moves into an exploration of relationships which is deep and undeniably real. Rayment is wickedly funny as Queenie, a character who is crying out for a longer format to roam around in.

Last Ride by Ross Mueller is the story of two old codgers who find their night veering wildly off the rails when the try to score drugs for a bird they’ve met in a bar. It’s an interesting premise which seems ripe for some laughs, but when the girl they’ve met seems completely unfazed by the violence that threatens we’re questioning where we are and how the hell we got here.

The most thought-provoking play for the night is Jonathan Ari Lander’s Measure which takes on the story of a suspected Cambodian Khmer Rouge soldier who is forced to face his past. It’s brimming with depth and realism, thanks to an emotionally charged and vulnerable performance by Felino Dolloso as the accused murderer Lohr.

Jonathan Gavin’s The Return rounds out the evening with a rollicking romance which takes it’s inspiration from the journals of Matthew Flinders, who, the play suggests may have been a much better navigator than he was a husband. This laugh-out-loud jaunt sees Flinders (Matt Charleston) returning home to face the music after leaving wife Ann (Natalie Saleeba) home in England for almost ten years while he’s been off gallivanting across the oceans with his cat Trim. Saleeba and Charleston have a ball with this very funny material and bounce off each other with superb comic timing. It’s a wonderful ending to the night that leaves the audience spilling over into the foyer grinning from ear to ear.

Brand Spanking New is simply a great, fun night of theatre that is sure to leave you feeling optimistic and pleasantly surprised about the range of talented playwrights that are out there right now. And on that note, after all the fuss in the press this week that’s seen Neil Armfield dodging bullets over Belvoir’s 2010 “boys club” line-up, it seems worth pointing out that perhaps the answer to the question: Where are all the talented female writers and directors in the Sydney scene, has already been answered – a fair few of them are hiding out at the New!