A while back I blogged on this subject and shared a family recipe known as Aunty Joyce’s Ginger Slice. I don’t jealously guard too many recipes today as now there are so many ways people find recipes and formerly exotic ingredients. The internet brings everywhere to us, and modern food distribution takes food ingredients into areas far distant from where they are produced, for use while they are still relatively fresh.
As I child growing up in Tasmania, I had never seen or heard of an avocado. I was aged about 30 in Kalgoorlie Western Australia when Mike brought two home from the fruit & veg market that cost $2 each, a lot of money in the late 70’s! Once over that sticker shock, and finding nothing in the cookbooks I had (where were very eurocentric) I went next door and asked a neighbour, Penny, who’d once lived in Fiji, how to prepare them. What she told me I still think is the nicest way to eat an avocado. She told me to cut them in half, remove the pip, cut diagonally crisscross into the flesh, sprinkle with a little s&p and a little white vinegar ad eat with a teaspoon. In Queensland during the Great Depression avocado was termed ‘Poor Man’s Butter’. They’re a lot cheaper these days, highly nutritious, and available ‘everywhere’. Of course we avo as a spread on crackers, toast or a salad roll, as is plain, or with a couple of additives. We’ve filled the cavity with spicy mixtures of crab and prawns. We’ve teamed it with goats cheese and wrapped parceled in smoked salmon. When we add fresh chilli, lemon juice, garlic, cilantro, finely chopped onion and tomato it becomes guacamole, which of course originated in Mexico and central America, and is now popular around the world.
I googled cookbooks in 2019 and from just skimming down the search results, key words like nutritional, international, expert, sophisticated, simple, happiness, healthy, ambitious, inspired and diverse pop up; so I gather that cookbooks are as popular es ever. In addition, there are all the popular cooking TV shows, often entertaining and always educational, featuring celebrity chefs who also put out books on their cooking philosopy, style of cooking, best recipes and views on nutrition. Nutrition is a big driver to recipe selection these days as home cooks want to prepare healthy nutritional recipes that look gorgeous. It’s popular to get a group of people together to go to a cooking /dining event where everyone learns and then eats together what they prepared. People go on cookery holidays, enrol in classes, and trawl the internet for recipes and online demos. Recipes are everywhere, and people are interested in experimenting with cuisine.
Which brings me to a recipe shared by a Mount Isa days friend, Christine, who made it for dinner while visiting us in Perth some years ago. Though I clearly remember how she made it, I don’t remember what she called it, so I just refer to it as that mascarpone and date cheese cake.
It’s always popular, and the last couple of years a couple of groups I belong to requested I bring it to our end of year luncheons. To make it, first reduce a pack of plain chocolate biscuits to fine crumbs in the food processer, (or however you do that) then add enough melted butter to bind it all together. Press into a spring form tin and put in the freezer to set firm. Overnight I marinate about 1/2 to 2 cups of finely chopped dates in orange juice, and drain the fruit well before spreading it out onto the chocolate base, covering that with room temperature mascarpone cheese topped with grated semi sweet dark chocolate. Dried apricots are a fabulous variation, and I’ve also done marinated sultanas, chopped dates, raisins and blanched almonds – sort of like a fruit mince recipe. The possibilities are many, therefore, and it’s original name and the quantities really don’t matter much. Chris is a keen gourmet cook, and has always used her many elegant cookery books (unlike yours truly who has some she rarely uses) and every time I make the original or one of my variations, I always think of her.