Mother’s Day: when it comes to cooking, her kitchen rules
Some our best cooks won’t hesitate to tell you that, when it comes to good food, mother knows best.
Measuring, mixing and licking the bowl — every cook has to start somewhere. We learn so much from watching our mothers in the kitchen; not just about how to create certain dishes but also the wider issues of time management, hygiene, safety and minimising waste. And how to get so proficient at cooking that the recipe barely rates a second glance.
Former MasterChef contestant Jessie Spiby remembers learning to cook from her mother and grandmother, who appeared able to whip up a three-course meal out of nothing.
Adelaide-based Spiby didn’t start out with three-course meals, though, but scones and cakes, in particular chocolate cakes.
At the time — aged about eight — she thought she was making the desserts all by herself. In hindsight, of course, she realises her mum Sally was watching over her every move.
Spiby remembers making a cake for her dad and getting confused with the ratios. The cake looked right but tasted like bicarbonate of soda.
“You can’t get it right all the time — if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world,” she says. “You just start again or eat it anyway.”
As well as learning her family’s chocolate cake recipe, she was also taught about food waste: “Both my mum and grandma enjoyed cooking from scratch and I grew up not realising that was not what other people did.”
With a family background in farming, to Spiby it made sense to put care into how produce was handled. “It teaches you to really savour your food; it really influenced how I enjoy food still.”
These days her new interest in native Australian ingredients has led her to raiding her mother’s property at Willunga, South Australia, for produce.
“She doesn’t realise how much she can eat from there which looks like weeds. It’s cool for me to learn and then go there and steal it.”
Emily Rose Brott, who has published a new cookbook, My Secret Ingredient, says her mother Vivienne was her inspiration for cooking healthy food.
“I grew up watching her in the kitchen,” she says. “She probably liked having me there cleaning up.”
Melbourne-based Brott says her mother always cooked healthy, wholesome food for the family. “She had a few favourite recipes, chocolate cake and spaghetti bolognaise. I did make a healthy version of the chocolate cake, which is as virtuous as chocolate cake can get and it still gets passed around.”
Her biggest compliment about her own cooking skills, she says, comes from her mother — who now rings her up asking for cooking tips. Turning the tables, indeed.
Monday Morning Cooking Club member and author Merelyn Chalmers remembers that when she was as a child living in Perth, her mother was very particular about her ingredients.
“She wanted her walnuts and poppy seed to be the freshest possible,” Chalmers says. That meant young Merelyn would sit in the back yard shelling the walnuts and crushing them with a hammer so they could be hand-ground.
Later, her mum, Yolan, visited her native Hungary and returned with a cast-iron poppy seed grinder. “The first time I made poppy seed cake for her in Sydney, Mum said: ‘It tastes very good but your poppyseeds aren’t fresh,’ ” she says.
About once a week her mother would cook schnitzel for the family and from a young age Chalmers and her older brother would help in the production line. She would trim the schnitzel and her brother would egg and crumb it while her mother did the frying.
“Schnitzel is probably what my children remember the most about their grandmother,” she says.
Prahran Market stallholder and author of Sweet Greek Kathy Tsaples grew up in Melbourne after her parents migrated from Greece in the early 1950s.
“The first thing I remember about my mum and the thing that comes to my mind over and above everything else is just her passion in keeping our culture through food and religion and language,” she says. “She was always a feeder and a nurturer, even though she worked, food to her was sacred.”
The first thing Tsaples learned to cook was the semolina custard used in the Greek dessert galaktoboureko. “It’s the most beautiful, beautiful treat you could give yourself,” she says.
“It was a comfort food that Mum would always make. Whatever we were going through, no matter where we were and no matter what was happening, she always made galaktoboureko.”
Her mother, Aristea, passed on the belief that food was sacred and that you shouldn’t get lazy about the family meal. “Mum would say the best thing was to wake up in the morning, start your household chores, do what you had to do, then start your evening meal straight away,” she says.
“Of course that only works if you’re home. When she was working, she used to half prepare the meal the night before because so many of our dishes are casseroles … and finish it off the next day.”
Anne A’Herran says the first thing she learned about cooking from her mother Phyl was to plan the timing of a meal backwards from when you wanted it to be on the table so the cook would not be rushed and people would not have to wait for the meal.
The other important lesson was to use butter, or in the case of her mother’s mulberry pie, a mixture of butter and lard for the pastry. “The lard is quite good though of course these days you couldn’t say lard in public,” she says.
“Her main thing for that recipe was to be quick and be cool. You have to be deft with your fingertips and iced water otherwise it will fall apart and be sloppy, and you need to cut the butter through with two knives as I’ve taught my daughter.”
In the 1970s when her own daughters were young and the family was struggling financially, A’Herran used to feed them liver and call it steak. “They never forgave me,” she says.
“They laugh about it but one of them is vegan now and she says that’s why.”
A’Herran’s father had lived in India in the 1920s and 30s before returning to Australia and marrying her mother.
“She tried in her Aussie way to make a curry for him and it ended up more like a sweet fruit stew and we all thought that was curry our whole life,” A’Herran says.
“It was quite an eye-opener, as we grew older and cuisine in Australia took on a new flavour, to discover what curry was and (that) there were many kinds and this thing my mother made was not really curry. It was really delicious but not curry.
“Things your mother cooks go into the deep recesses of your memory and they sometimes stay there when you’re a busy working woman. When you emerge from your work and start to become a grandparent and cook for grandchildren they come back.”
A’Herran is moving from Townsville to Kangaroo Island, where there is a lovely old mulberry tree — just perfect for making pies.
Chocolate saints cake with lavender cream (A recipe passed down from Jessie Spiby’s mum, and grandmother before her)
Enjoyed by my cousins at St Peter’s boarding school, hence the name Saints Cake, and at many of my own birthday parties, this humble little cake recipe is a true family favourite. Undergoing a few minor alterations along the way, the base cake recipe has always stayed the same.
My grandma would fill hers with a decadent chocolate mousse, while Mum has been known to layer hers with whipped cream and strawberries. Both perfectly delicious. My little change is to serve the cake with a whipped lavender cream. The fresh notes in the lavender cut through the richness and add a light floral flavour that pairs really beautifully with the dark chocolate.
This recipe is incredibly easy to make and does all the opposite things that cakes normally do. The cake won’t rise, it forms a crust and is really rather dense. However, don’t be fooled by its humble looks, what the Saints Cake lacks in beauty it makes up for in flavour!
Prep: 15 minutes. Cooking: 70 minutes. Serves: 10-12
Chocolate cake
Ingredients: 200g dark chocolate (the best you can afford) | 200g unsalted butter cut into cubes | 100g plain flour | 300g caster sugar | 6 eggs
Preheat oven to about 180C. Line the base of a round springform tin. Grease sides well with butter. Melt butter and chocolate in microwave for 3-5 minutes. Mix together with spatula to combine. Beat eggs, sugar and flour until thick and pale. Fold in the melted chocolate mixture until evenly combined. Bake for about 70 minutes. Allow cake to cool slightly before removing from the tin.
Lavender cream
Ingredients: 1 cup cream | 1½ teaspoon dried lavender, crushed | 1 tablespoon icing sugar
In a small saucepan combine cream and dried lavender, bring to a simmer. Strain the mixture, discarding the lavender. Cover the mixture and place in fridge until completely cooled. Once cool, beat the cream mixture and sugar with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Serve immediately.
Note: If you are filling your cake with mousse or cream, divide the mixture between two tins and cook for about 30-40 minutes at 160C.
As part of the Tasting Australia festival in Adelaide, Jessie Spiby will give a cooking demonstration at Town Square (Victoria Square) today at 2.45pm. She also will cook at the Origins Dinner tonight at a venue yet to be disclosed. tastingaustralia.com.au