Cafe Soleil - Episode 5

It hurt him to remember that time when one of the new nursing assistants had left the feeding tube in and Mark choked on his own vomit. Come to think of it, she was Vietnamese and didn’t know how to explain what had happened to the ambos. A close call. He’d survived that episode and kept a close watch on the staff now – as much as you could when you weren’t there all day.

The diminished form with the still vibrant red hair under the covers was really a ghost. And how did you communicate with a ghost? Darryl had been a sort of Catholic in his youth – everyone was something – Catholic or Protestant mostly – in those days you never heard of Buddhists or Muslims and people would never admit to being agnostics or atheists – you had to have something to belong to – even then you’d get teased depending on which side of the religious fence you were on. Catholics went for drama in a big way with incense and those ghastly bloodied figures nailed to crosses. Proddies somehow seemed more genteel – arranging flowers in church and baking cakes. His Mum always covered her head when she went to Mass although she didn’t understand the Latin, and fingered rosary beads and sometimes cooked for the priest.

Darryl had tried to believe, had tried to hope. His God had deserted him. There was now a void where before at least there had been ritual and habit. Eventually he began to realise his prayers were falling on deaf ears. Or maybe he wasn’t praying hard enough? What was he now? He was just a man and this was just his son.

The sand squelched under his feet, little sharp shards of shell he could usually see in the daylight made him wince when he stepped on them – in the distance the floodlights from the oval where they were training for Saturday’s match, illuminated the water, gave the waves an unnatural glow. He breathed in the sharp sea air – and tried to think of nothing. A lonely fisherman was just packing up his tackle. Darryl waved and said something like “catch anything?” but he couldn’t hear the reply as the relentless waves continued to wash the sand. In the distance he could hear the sound of teenagers laughing as they skinny dipped further down the beach and the muffled roar of bikies engines on their way up the hill.

When he got to the edge of the lagoon, he could make out a shape sitting on the sand. The beach was near deserted in the evenings. He drew closer and could see it was a woman and she seemed to be weeping. He almost turned away, but something made him go up to her, just to see if she was OK.

“Are you alright?”

She muffled “Yes. I’m OK.”

The voice was familiar. It had to be Susannah.

“It’s Darryl.”

“Oh.”

“Can I sit down?”

“Sure.”

He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. They stared out at the lagoon, where the full moon was casting an unnatural glow. Tentatively, he put his arm around her.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nup.”

“Alright.” Do you think we should be getting back? You could get weirdos on the beach at night.”

“Like you, you mean?”

“I’m harmless. Just a middleaged bloke trying to run a café. And not doing that great a job at it.”

He took her arm as she got up.

“You do fine, Darryl.”

“Can I escort you home? Do you live far?” He realised as soon as he said it that it was a bit presumptuous. “Sorry, not my business, is it?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ve got my car in the car park though. You can walk me back there. I like to come down here to be alone with my thoughts.”

“Me too.”

“A penny for yours then.”

“Oh, just about how my life is going nowhere. I’ve still got the insurance from the accident but don’t know how long that’s going to last.”

“I suppose going back to your job is not an option?”

“They declared me unfit to take on any more cases. Legal aid, it was. I did enjoy it. But it was very stressful and…” she trailed off.

He didn’t like to prod, so remained silent.

She began “And what brings you down to the beach at this ungodly hour?”

“Same. To think, to relax. My son…”

“You have a son? I didn’t know.”

“He’s with us and not really with us. “He’s in a hospital. Persistent vegetative state.”

Her face was turned away, but her swift intake of breath was audible.

“I’m so sorry.”

“That’s alright.”

The headlights on her Toyota flashed as she clicked the door open.

“Can I give you a lift?”

“No. It’s OK. I need the walk.”

“See you tomorrow, for a coffee?

“Sounds great.”

He leaned in for a kiss on the cheek and she hugged him. He was surprised.

 

Kids in the Kitchen - The Alchemy of Cooking

When I’m creating something delicious in the kitchen, I’m always reminded of how much food preparation is like alchemy.

Wikipedia and other sources refer to alchemy as the transmutation of matter - traditionally alchemists used to try to turn base metals into gold. 

Alchemy is the art of turning something into something else – from several things we create something new and delicious. When I’m cooking I feel truly alive – I’m making some food, sustenance for myself or my family and I feel I’m tapping into something that is a basic human drive.

I look at a few ingredients, sometimes leftovers, and decide what I’m going to turn them into.

I’m completely in awe of people like Heston Blumenthal of molecular gastronomy fame – I’ve never used something like liquid nitrogen to transform a dish (although I do do a mean Crème Brulee with my blowtorch!) as I do quite well with the tools I already have to hand and as an avid consumer of cooking magazines like Delicious and Gourmet Traveller and shows like Masterchef, I’m constantly bombarded by new ideas and techniques. Still, it’s not often I don’t tweak a recipe to either suit personal taste or make do with a different ingredient for one that’s not available or in short supply. So there’s always something new and different to create. I take inspiration from great chefs like Otam Ottolenghi, great home cooks like Maggie Beer and my own forays into markets for fresh ingredients.

It’s shocking to me that people don’t cook – that that is something that they outsource, like cleaning or pesky IT problems. Or that they would sign up for a whole bunch of prepared meals and freeze them, pop them in the microwave and be content. I keep seeing an advertisement that declares that people would rather spend time with their kids than cook. But you can spend time with your kids and cook too! That concept would be completely foreign to me – I think teaching kids to cook is an important life skill for them to learn. Feeding friends and family and searching for different combinations of different foods is a sometimes astonishing and interesting pastime. Well, for me it’s more than a pastime – I couldn’t ever imagine not cooking and baking and sharing recipes. All my kids know how to cook (and they’re good cooks) and now I’m teaching my grandchildren. They absolutely love it and are keen to be in the kitchen and help me create. It’s a proven fact that kids will more likely eat something that they’ve made themselves.

Last week, my grandchildren Thomas and Gabriella played Masterchef for me – they created some interesting dishes – strawberries, custard, savoury Dippit biscuits, basil and Minions lollies. Needless to say, I gave them both Immunity pins!

     

The other day, my granddaughter and I made some cupcakes. I popped them in my daughter’s oven and we accidentally burned them. I went to throw them out and Hope said “Oh, don’t do that, I’ll eat burnt cupcakes.” Hilarious! She’s only three and was involved in every step of the process.

She’s enjoying one here!

Years ago, I met a woman at a party and she said as she looked with disdain at a delicious canape “I can’t wait till we’re all taking a pill instead of eating”. I felt sorry for her, because surely the pleasure of eating engages our senses - sight, smell, touch and taste and surely if we were meant to pop a pill, we wouldn’t be blessed with our extremely sophisticated internal method of processing food. It’s fascinating to see how our body works at turning food into fuel and to marvel at the way we first create saliva when we see something delicious to eating it and digesting it and it providing us with energy. In the time it takes to wait for a take away (not to mention the cost) you can whip up a tasty meal in just ten minutes.

I think often we are scared of making a mistake and having the whole dish go to pot, literally. Everyone’s probably got a story about the dinner party gone wrong And if the accepted wisdom that you have to spend 10,000 hours perfecting a skill is true, then you’ve got to do a fair bit of cooking before you become an expert. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn shortcuts, easy ways to do things and enjoy the process. I love helping people cook, and I get great satisfaction out of the beautiful things created by my students. The fantastic smell of baking was just heaven this afternoon as my kitchen was filled with the aroma of a butter cake from a French recipe that I got out of Feast magazine. Cooking and baking and therefore creating makes me happy.

Cafe Soleil - Episode 4

“I had an accident.  I couldn’t walk for six months.  Several screws in my leg.  Things just got on top of me and I had a breakdown.  Lost my relationship – no children fortunately.” She pushed back her bob and he got a glimpse of a greying temple.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”  He took her hand and she didn’t withdraw it.

It was the weekend now and thirty or so motorcycles roared past the café and up the hill to the beach.  He could just see them – all in black leather, some really overweight, reliving their heyday – sad grey ponytails flapping in the wind.  Why did they have need of so much noise?  He supposed it was the masculine sense of power throbbing between their legs combined with the speed that made them feel invincible.  He hoped they weren’t going to clog up the café later with their helmets and swagger.  Not much chance of that, they weren’t the coffee drinking types anyway.

The divers were also getting ready, squirming into wetsuits that had trouble accommodating their ample middles and trying to balance those heavy tanks on their backs at the same time. It seemed like so much effort to dive to an ancient wreck. He’d seen the boats coming in to shore and bobbing on the waves as the divers clambered aboard.  It seemed to take them ages, impeded by their gigantic flippers, masks and the heavy weight on their backs.

Then there were the extrovert Middle Eastern types with their gold chains and their “Hey mate…” loud but inoffensive in their souped up jalopies or really flash SUVs and generally just out to have a good time, coming up to the Coast with their botoxed girlfriends, who seemed more intent on shopping the boutiques than actually swimming or surfing.

He was due at the hospital again tonight and he was dreading it.  No change meant no change.  The only bright thing in his day might be a visit from Susannah.  He didn’t like to ask who the well-dressed man was, and he was scared to ask her out on a date.  A date? He must be out of his mind.  Why would someone like her be interested in him? He was never the athlete or the brainy type either and it was a miracle Judy had ever seen any potential in him.  She was fit, watched what she ate. Who’d have thought she’d die before him? It wasn’t fair. Now they’d never be like those impossibly youthful and tanned looking sixty-something couples laughing on the deck of an enormous boat that the cruise lines advertised.  At least he had a good Public Service job and looked forward to an easy if unremarkable retirement.  But a drunk driver put paid to all that, and now he spent his days working like a Trojan and his nights keeping vigil over a ghost.

The automatic doors opened wide as if to swallow him and he started walking down the hall.  The place was clean, terrifyingly so and smelled like a cross between antiseptic and air freshener.  He passed rooms where old men and women moaned and cried.  Sometimes they were completely silent, all tidied up in pristine sheets and blankets – laid out like corpses.  He wondered whether anyone ever came to visit them.  The night nurse on a Tuesday always gave him a beatific smile – she was a Filipina and once told him how she worked sixty hours a week to send money home to her family.  He couldn’t imagine the dedication and sacrifice that took.  She was on duty tonight.

“Hi Darryl”

“How is he?”

“He’s doing fine.  We just give him his night feed.  He is resting OK.  You can go in now.”

“Thanks”

Mark seemed to just be sleeping peacefully. Darryl stroked his hand and sat down by the bed.  He usually sang silly children’s songs to while away the time.  Sometimes it was Pop goes the Weasel or some other song – anything to try to wake up that inert grey matter inside his skull.  Anything to fire up more neurons, to get some sort of reaction,  Creatively arranging his finances, he had managed to get Mark a private room – and it was costing an arm and a leg, but it didn’t matter.  He wouldn’t want to foist his out of tune tenor on any of the other patients – even if they were gaga.  So he sang,   He’d heard miraculous stories of people waking up from comas after months and still believed that it might happen.  He hadn’t been asked to pull the plug yet – that wasn’t exactly what they called it – but that’s what it meant.