It’s always a bit flattering to be asked for a recipe. These days I don’t hesitate, but in the past I have been a bit protective about my repertoire of favourites. In our university days, when I was flatting with Jane and Heather, and then The Two Cathys, we all knew how to make meals like hearty soups and stews, roasts and grills, with emphasis on making the food go as far as possible for the lowest cost. Minced beef, vegetables and rice came round frequently in various combos and disguises, such as nasi goreng, savoury mince, curry and rice, meat loaf, rissoles, Greens Beach Special, spaghetti bolognaise, pastie pie and chilli con carne – no, just kidding with this last one, which we’d never heard of until our first visit to the southwest of the USA in 1980 .
On arriving in Kalgoorlie just after marrying, through the next 20 years in remote Outback mining towns, I developed quite a collection of favourite recipes, some of them pretty fancy, and with that came a hesitancy to pass these recipes on. (These days I don’t mess so much with fancy cuisine – no one else does, either – a good development.) Sometimes ingredients were a bit hard to come by, certainly, but the main thing, I think, was that in those days of frequent dinner parties and potluck events, morning and afternoon teas, tennis afternoon teas, canasta days and sunday lunches, we were fairly often catering for close friends and visiting outsiders. In such small communities I guarded my few special recipes as ‘different’, no one else had them – and of course there was no internet to consult. It meant I never met meet my own recipes coming and going, and perhaps cooked better/or not as well as my version !! If pressed, when asked for a recipe, I’d cheerily say I’d be happy to give it to them the day we left town; because it was a given that we too would move on one day. Interestingly, by the time it was our turn to leave, most often that person had already gone, and presumably forgotten about the recipe anyway. So I apologise to anyone from my past to whom I failed to pass on a recipe as I’d said I would ! If one or two reading this care to identify yourselves, I’ll do my best to rectify that promise !!
Last week it was my turn to host the mahjong group. We arrive at or close to 10.30 for coffee, tea and enjoy a brunch together before playing until early-mid afternoon. Last week I put on a couple of different quiches freshly backed by the T.I., some fresh fruit, biscuits and cheeses and some of Aunty Joyce’s ginger fudge/slice which I have renamed Alison’s Ginger Fudge:
I lined the slice tin with some non-stick plastic for easy lifting out for cutting. The girls enthused about this tangy recipe. (I might have been a bit heavy handed with the ginger …) Anyway, I told them I would share it. Some of them talked of ‘fudge’. When I googled ‘ginger fudge’, I found nothing exactly like it, and what there was sounded very sweet, more in the line of confectionary, really.