Food

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Interview with Richard Moon, author of Moon On A Spoon

Moon on a Spoon, a lovely combination of food-centred memoir and cookbook, is the creation of acclaimed silverworking artisan and former professional chef, Richard Moon. With an engaging warmth, humour and clarity, Richard gives the reader glimpses into the various people and places which influenced his cooking style as well as his life, from the Queensland potato farm of his early childhood to his high-school Home Economics classes, from years in the RAAF’s newly-opened catering unit in Adelaide making large quantities of food, to cooking in all sorts of restaurants and cafés in the Blue Mountains, from time as sous-chef and trainer at a very multicultural hotel training school in the Mountains, to creating dishes for food media while discovering a new direction, as a creator of wearable silver jewellery, and finally and eventually starting a creator-centred business, The Makers Shed, in rural northern NSW, with his partner in life and business, author and journalist Michael Burge, who has also written the engaging foreword to this book.

The book is beautifully structured, each segment of Richard’s story accompanied by relevant recipes, which cover an eclectic range, from his father’s favourite Banana Caramel Pie to an airforce crowd-pleaser of Brie Burger, from a Potato Waffle created in a Blue Mountains café (and I so agree with him regarding the sadly underestimated but so very versatile and wonderful spud!) to making Tarte Tatin (one of my favourite sweets ever!) for a fabulous French restaurant in Hartley Vale, just over the Mountains; from a Black Sticky Rice recipe in another café to Filipino beef stew from his time in the hotel school to truffle butter created after visiting a truffle farm during his food magazine days; from quince paste first devised after foraging for the wild-growing fruit to a home-made Worcestershire sauce. All the recipes are clearly explained and are practical yet enticing.

I caught up with Richard not long after the book’s launch by publisher High Country Books.

Richard during his time at Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School.

1.First of all, Richard, congratulations on the publication of Moon on a Spoon! Can you tell us a bit about how it came about?

Thank you for the generous intro Sophie! To be honest, it was when Michael and I were driving up to Queensland a couple of years ago, and, inevitably, talking about The Makers Shed and the local artisanal products we stock, particularly while we were expanding the range of books on offer. We decided a cookbook would be a good addition to the collection at High Country Books, the little bookshop within our gallery. Racking our brains thinking of whose book we could stock, we hit on the idea of publishing our own! I had a large collection of recipes and some amusing anecdotes from years in the kitchen, and Michael can put a good book together… so Moon On A Spoon was born as the second publication of our imprint!

2. What was the process of writing it like? Were there any particular challenges—or pleasures?

I’m not a natural writer, so Michael was on my case regularly, reminding me to, “Just add a little more.” It was interesting revisiting my other life… so many memories, some fond and some I’d rather not revisit. Only the fun ones went into the book… we didn’t want a tragedy!

3. How did you choose the recipes you include in the book?

There were a few must-haves in my collection. All the recipes we included have been made so often, they’re like old friends. An old Air Force mate, when she heard about the book, asked if the Chicken and Yoghurt Pie was in? Of COURSE! I couldn’t leave that out!!! A couple of the recipes were requested over the year by Gourmet Traveller magazine for their Fare Exchange section, so those were included. In the end, I treated the process like composing a menu (a really big one)… that was always a favourite part of my work. Combining tastes, textures and eye appeal while ensuring a variety of dishes for everyone no matter their dietary requirements.

Richard on a field trip to a Hawkesbury oyster farm

4. You have had such a richly varied professional life and the stories you tell about it are very engaging. But is there anything else, in terms of cooking/food experiences that you would have liked to do but didn’t get around to?

I would have liked to work overseas for an extended period. Unfortunately I never had the courage or connections to do it. Instead, I simply savoured the tastes of the countries and cultures I’ve visited. I remember places by the food I ate there! Otherwise, looking back, I’m satisfied with my career in food. From occasionally cooking for masses in tents on stoves that ran on jet fuel, to busy cafes, to exquisite French fare, to teaching, with forays into food styling and foraging in between (and sometimes concurrently), gotta be happy with that unique journey.  

5. A cheeky question, this one—is it always you who cooks at home or do you and Michael share it?

It’s normally me doing the cooking. To be honest, that’s mostly because I hate washing up! Michael is a good cook though and rustles up a satisfying meal when he has time. He’s actually concocting a Mexican feast right now, to give me space to write this!

Richard Moon, silversmith

6. What do you hope readers will get from your book?

Well firstly, I hope they get a bit of a laugh at the more amusing anecdotes that I’ve shared in the book. Then I’d like to think that they enjoy cooking the dishes that I selected (I’ve had a few folks tell me they’re loving them). Ultimately though, my wish is that anyone considering a change of career in midlife, may be emboldened to do so! The metamorphosis will probably not be instant… it took me six years of study and practice before silversmithing became my full-time career. But with courage and tenacity, life can take a whole new direction! And I’m so grateful.

Moon on a Spoon is available from High Country Books at The Makers Shed, Deepwater; The Seasons Store, Uralla; The Reader’s Companion, Armidale, or Wise Words Bookshop, Moree.

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My piece in The Australian today!

Absolutely delighted to see in The Australian newspaper today that my contribution, as Sophie Beaumont, to their annual Summer Cookbook feature, has been published! The theme this year was ‘My Last Meal’ 😁 and I have contributed a description of a menu plus a recipe for the centrepiece dish, a delectable Paris-style roast chicken.

Thrilled with the positioning too–the piece is flagged on the front page, just under their masthead, and has a full page inside–very exciting!

Leave a comment Posted on adult fiction, announcements, Food, France, Paris, Paris Cooking School, recipes

New recipe and menu pages for The Paris Cooking School!

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve created two new pages on this site, which are associated with The Paris Cooking School. They feature recipes, food notes and menus mentioned and described in the book, so that readers can, if they wish, actually reproduce some of those things in their own kitchens! They are written as pages taken from Kate’s notebook, in Kate’s voice, but are real working recipes, tested and cooked in my own kitchen and illustrated with colour photos. And also illustrated with beautiful header images by my lovely friend, talented artist and photographer Lorena Carrington, who has brought the ‘look’ of Kate’s notebook to gorgeous life!

There are two pages: one features lots of recipes and food notes, the other is a simple menu with selected recipes from the main page so you can easily and quickly create a full Paris Cooking School-inspired meal. I hope you enjoy-and if you do cook any of these dishes, I’d love to hear your stories and see your photos, email to me at info@sophiemassonauthor.com

3 Comments Posted on Food, France

Making rotisserie-style chicken at home

One of my favourite food things, whenever I’m back in France, is to head to a small neighbourhood rotisserie or one in a market, and grab a delicious roast chicken for a picnic lunch with family. French rotisserie chickens have a very particular taste you just can’t seem to get elsewhere. Sometimes it has to do with the fact they are poulets fermiers, chickens that are really free range, and often fed on corn, so the flesh is golden rather than white. Those are, of course, particularly delicious. But not all rotisserie chickens are from those superior breeds (the cheaper ones aren’t, anyway), yet all of the roast birds taste really very good indeed. It’s to do with a savoury, deep golden brown skin(not crisp, but melt-in-the-mouth) and very moist flesh, and up till recently I had no idea how you could possibly reproduce that at home. Did you need special rotisserie equipment, maybe? And then, I came across a page from a French blog which set out a very simple recipe for how you could in fact produce a roast which had exactly the taste of rotisserie chicken. I admit I was a little sceptical at first, because it seemed in a sense counter-intuitive, what you did with the chicken–and yet it turned out perfectly, and now it’s been several times since I’ve made a roast chicken that has that amazing rotisserie taste. Absolutely definitely worth trying!

So, what do you need? A chicken of course, then also Dijon mustard(about 1-2 tablespoons); 3 garlic cloves; juice of 1 lemon; butter; 125 mls warm chicken stock(use half a stock cube only); herbs(your choice, but thyme and bay leaf or thyme and parsley work well); salt and pepper. What you do is first massage the chicken with half the lemon juice, then pour the rest into the cavity. Put the herbs into the cavity, chop the garlic(don’t crush it) and put half in the cavity, half under the chicken. Next, massage the mustard into the chicken, taking care that all the skin of the bird is well-coated–the mustard needs to almost disappear into it. Place the chicken in a roasting tin, salt and pepper it, sprinkle a few small pieces of butter over it(I also add a tiny bit of canola/sunflower oil), and then pour in the stock under the chicken, not over it. Put in the oven at 210C for 30 minutes, then turn down to 180C and cook for a further 45-60 mins (depending on size of the chicken).

Serve with roast potatoes or salad and good bread. I also make a sauce for the chicken which is basically just the utterly delicious cooking juices, to which extra lemon juice and pepper have been added. The whole thing is truly sensational–and simple, at the same time!

Leave a comment Posted on Book talk, cooking, creative writing, Fiction, Food

Food in fiction: reposted from Writer Unboxed

I thought readers of this blog might enjoy my latest post around the craft of fiction, reposted from the wonderful site Writer Unboxed. This one’s on food in fiction.

In life, people’s days are punctuated by meals. Food is an important part of our lives: of course, we need it for survival, but it’s much more than that. It’s pleasure, it’s penance, it’s anxiety, it’s joy—depending on our relationship with it. Eating together or alone, eating at home or out in restaurants and cafes, eating on the go or around the family table: it’s all part of the fabric of human life, all over the globe.

And in fiction? Well, it always used to puzzle me, as a kid, when people in books never stopped to eat or drink or you never got to hear what was for lunch, if it was mentioned. For me as a child, it was important to know: my diary as a twelve-year-old is full of mentions of the delicious things my mother had cooked up for us that day, or the yummy thing I’d bought at the school canteen that day (which my mother would have considered rubbish) or, conversely, the yuckiness of something I’d been made to try by a friend, such as vegemite—an Australian classic but not to my taste. Sure, I’m from a French background and food was intensely important in our family, but we certainly weren’t alone in that. To read a story in which there was no mention of food at all seemed odd. But to read one in which exotic delights like ginger pop (as in Enid Blyton) were mentioned—often!—was such fun. I had no idea at the time what ginger pop was but it sounded exciting, like the adventures the Famous Five or Secret Seven went on. And when Edmund, in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, is offered endless Turkish Delight by the White Witch to bribe him to betray his siblings, I was horrified, but understood. Hard to resist Turkish Delight! Growing up through adolescence and into adulthood, I never lost my interest in food and cooking, and never ceased to wonder why in some novels, people seemed to exist on air.

When it came to writing my own books, that was never an issue. Food always appeared, whether glancingly or more substantially, in both my fiction for young readers and for adults. Sometimes it was just for the sheer pleasure of the description, sometimes to evoke an atmosphere, sometimes to symbolize something about a character. I couldn’t imagine leaving it out altogether. In my recent adult novel, for example, A Hundred Words for Butterfly, which is set in the French part of the Basque country, where my mother’s family is from, food functions very much too as an expression of an ancient, distinctive culture and landscape, as well as illuminating certain aspects of family. If you’re interested, the publisher produced a lovely, free digital magazine which featured some of my Basque family recipes as well as entries from a microlit competition they ran, as part of the publicity for my book.

Right now, I’m working on another adult novel in which food—and especially the creation of dishes and meals–is absolutely central, indeed a crucial part of the characters’ emotional journey. That’s a challenge in itself: because of course you can overdo it. You can cook up too rich a stew, you can overwhelm the senses with too many smells and tastes, you can nauseate the reader with too much indigestible detail. You can’t be too self-indulgent; but equally, you can’t be too restrained. It’s a fine line to tread.

I’d read recently a number of contemporary novels which featured food as a central theme—ranging from Jenny Colgan’s Meet Me at The Cupcake Café, to Erica Bauermeister’s The School of Essential Ingredients to Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, and others, all of which handled the food theme adeptly and enjoyably and with great diversity too. They all showed something important to me as a writer: in a time when people watch cooking shows for fun and cookbooks sell like, well, hotcakes, at the same time there’s less time for many around the actual stove or table. Getting the balance of ingredients right in a food-themed novel is more important than ever. Sure, they’re about dreams, escape, pleasure: but also about being grounded, about rediscovering simple things, about the basic human joy of creating something delicious that for the enchanted space of a good meal might unite us all.

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Start with two eggs and end up with icecream and mayonnaise!

Okay, so what does that mean, exactly? What on earth do icecream and mayonnaise have in common? It’s simple: they both(or at least the home-made variety) start with an egg, or two, in this case, as I was making a decent amount of both icecream and mayonnaise.

Simply put, the icecream starts with two egg whites; the mayonnaise with two egg yolks. And you can make them at the same time–or, rather, one immediately after the other. Both recipes are ultra-simple: they’re my own invention(especially in the case of the icecream–haven’t really seen any other recipes quite like it) but can be easily reproduced by anyone.

So let’s start! Assemble your ingredients: two eggs, which are of course common to both recipes: best for them not to be too cold (cold interferes especially with the successful thickening of the mayonnaise), so if they are in the fridge, take them out at least half an hour beforehand. Then for the icecream, you’ll need pure full cream(NOT thickened or light cream); castor sugar; and flavourings as desired(see recipe below). For the mayonnaise, you’ll need sunflower oil, a very small amount of vinegar(say a quarter-half teaspoon), salt and pepper. You will also need bowls for the icecream and the mayonnaise(in the case of the icecream, you need two bowls, one for the egg white mix, one for the cream, and if you want to make different flavours like I did this time, you’ll need more than that, to separate them out.

Now separate the eggs, putting the whites in one bowl and the yolks in another. I then made the icecream first but that’s not a rule or anything, you can do whichever first.

Icecream recipe (I call it my ‘snowball icecream’)

Beat the egg whites till soft peaks form, then add three tablespoons of castor sugar (one after the other, beating in between), beating the mix till it goes glossy, like meringue mix. Set aside and whip 300 ml of pure cream with one tablespoon castor sugar till glossy and thick. Blend the two mixes together, and that’s your base. Then flavour it with whatever you like: vanilla, melted chocolate, coffee, jam…The thing to remember is you must not mix in anything that is watery or juicy. So if you want a fruit flavour, for example, you use jam–strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, cherry are all especially delicious–not fresh fruit. The reason for that is that anything watery or juicy tends to form ice crystals: this icecream recipe makes particularly wonderful creamy soft-textured icecream which does not need any extra beating after freezing or special equipment, as long as you remember not to add those watery/juicy things. Below you can see the ones I made the other day: vanilla-flavoured(made with vanilla-bean-flavoured castor sugar, but you can also use vanilla essence); chocolate(dark chocolate melted with a tiny bit of cream) and strawberry(using our home-made jam made from divinely tasty Alpine strawberries).

This was to make a kind of home-made Neapolitan icecream. Okay, so then you put your icecream into a suitable container–if you’re making more than one flavour, you simply layer the flavours in the container) and stick it in the freezer. It will be ready in several hours: you can either make it in the morning to eat at night, or better still, make it in the evening to have for the next day. And that’s it! Like I said, no extra beating required, no special equipment of any sort(in fact I just use a hand beater to make the mix and that’s it) and the texture and taste is always wonderful. And it always works.

Mayonnaise recipe

Use a hand whisk for this one, it gives the best results. And by the way I use sunflower oil as experimenting has shown that gives the best classic subtle flavour: olive oil, which I normally use in sauces, is too strong, and other oils don’t seem to have the same subtlety as sunflower, in my experience, though canola is okay, and grapeseed oil as well. Add a tiny bit of vinegar to your egg yolks, stir in gently, then take your bottle of sunflower oil and slowly let in a trickle of oil into the yolks, beating as you go, then another trickle, whisking still, making sure that the egg is thickening up with the oil, and keeping that trickle going for quite a while so you get a good lot of lovely thick smooth mayonnaise. It shouldn’t be too ‘eggy’ in taste or too oily; taste it at various moments to check. Then add salt and pepper and any other flavourings you like: I’ve added piment d’Espelette to mine this time, but you can use herbs such as tarragon or thyme, or roasted garlic, whatever you fancy. Put in the fridge to cool–can be used within just a couple of hours. It will keep in the fridge, in a covered container, for around 3 days.

So now you can see how you can start with two eggs and end up with icecream and mayonnaise. Hope you enjoy creating your own!

Leave a comment Posted on Basque culture, cooking, Food, New books

My version of merlu koskera from the Basque country

Last night, to round off a week of celebrations around A Hundred Words for Butterfly, and to keep up the Basque theme, I made the dish known as ‘merlu koskera’, which is a beloved fish and vegetable soup/stew popular up and down the Basque coast, on both sides of the border, from Biarritz to San Sebastian and beyond. If ttoro, the delicious fish and seafood soup from the Basque coast, which I featured in an earlier post, is flamboyant in its rich redness, merlu koskera is themed around green and white, the other colours of the Basque flag. Traditionally, it’s a spring dish that features ‘merlu’, a type of cod, with seafood, asparagus, peas and boiled eggs as other ingredients, cooked in a delicious sauce of fish stock and white wine, and flavoured with parsley, garlic and piment d’Espelette. But as with most Basque dishes, it’s a flexible thing that can be interpreted according to what you have on hand, and that’s what I did. Here in Australia we can’t get merlu, so I substituted Pacific cod(bought frozen from the supermarket) and as our peas are not yet ready, it being a bit too early in spring for that, I substituted spinach for them. The asparagus though is ready so a bunch of them, fresh-picked from the garden, went into the dish, along with boiled eggs and prawns. (Mussels and clams are also popular additions in the Basque country). And of course piment d’Espelette (for which as I’ve indicated before, you can at a pinch substitute hot non-smoked paprika). My version of the dish was also less on the soupy side, more on the stewy side instead! If you want more soupy, add more fish stock than what I’ve indicated here.

So here’s my version of merlu koskera:

Ingredients (for 2 people): bunch of asparagus, steamed; handful of ‘English’ spinach, lightly steamed; 2 small/medium fillets cod; 6 prawns (or any other seafood you want); 2-3 boiled eggs; chopped parsley; 3 cloves garlic, sliced; half a cup of fish stock; splash white wine; pinch piment d’Espelette; salt to taste.

Method:

Lightly flour the cod fillets, and fry till the coating is getting golden. Add the parsley and garlic, lightly fry(do not let it burn). Add the fish stock and white wine and simmer for about 5 mins. Meanwhile, quickly cook the prawns in a little olive oil, set aside. Add the cooked spinach to the fish mix, stir(without disturbing the fish, add prawns and asparagus, heat through, quickly. Take pan off heat, arrange everything, including the halved boiled eggs, in a large dish or bowl, with the spinach down the bottom, the cod on top and everything else arranged around it. Sprinkle with the piment d’Espelette and serve with bread and boiled potatoes if you want. And that’s it!

Note: If you want to do the whole traditional thing, the peas(pre-cooked) go in at the same time as the spinach did in my version.

Leave a comment Posted on adult fiction, Audio books, Basque culture, Book talk, competitions, cooking, creative writing, Food, launches, microlit, New books

A fabulous launch; a lovely digital magazine to celebrate

We had the best time last night at the launch of A Hundred Words for Butterfly! Part of the launch included readings by the fabulous writers who were finalists and winners in the #100words4butterfly writing comp, and their stories, as well as some of my Basque-themed recipes, appear in this gorgeous digital magazine put together by the wonderful Hannah Oakshott from Spineless Wonders Short Australian Stories. Yummy food and amazing microlit–a perfect combination–check it all out below!

Congratulations to all the finalists and winners, and thank you so much to all the wonderful Spineless Wonders team, it was an absolutely awesome launch and I am still on a high!

1 Comment Posted on Audio books, Basque culture, Celebrations, cocktails, Food, New books

Pintxos to have with your Butterfly cocktails

Here are the perfect snacks to have with Abby’s gorgeous cocktails: pintxos!

Pinxtos (pronounced ‘pinchohs’) are the Basque version of tapas.  They are very popular in the Basque country(and beyond!). San Sebastian, just across the Spanish border, is renowned for its pinxtos bars but there are lots of popular pinxtos bars in the French Basque country too, especially on the coast, in my mother’s family’s stamping ground of Biarritz, Bayonne, Anglet, St Jean de Luz and so on. And people make them at home for parties, family gatherings etc. They are pretty hearty and a plate of assorted ones can constitute a real meal! Pinxtos differ from tapas in that they are always served on bread( very often slices of baguette), with a toothpick holding down the topping(actually ‘pintxo ‘ literally means ‘spiked’). The toppings will often feature Basque staples such as tomatoes, ham, eggs, capsicums, fish, seafood, cheese, etc, but can be as simple or complicated as you like, and there’s no one right way to do it: it’s totally up to you what you do! Just the bread and the toothpick are the basics:-) Piment d’Espelette of course can add that authentic touch!

With most, brushing the bread with a bit of olive oil first is a good idea.

Here’s some ideas for simple Basque-inspired toppings to get you started:

Roasted capiscum with marinated squid/octopus;

Semi-dried tomatoes with soft goat’s cheese and a dab of cherry jam on top (the combination of cheese and cherries is very popular in the Basque country)

Black olive tapenade with  Serrano-style ham or salami

Green olive tapenade with half a boiled egg and a sprinkle of piment d’Espelette or paprika

Grilled or barbecued prawns on cooked spinach

Marinated sardines or anchovies with caramelised onion

Mix of roasted vegs(eg capsicum, tomato, eggplant–or your choice) with roasted garlic