Summer, Oh Summer... Where Art Thou?

Seasons and weather dictate the availability of produce in the market and obviously this affects the way we cook, the recipes we turn to and the methods of cooking we employ.

It seems like lately, the city can’t make up her mind about what season she wants to be. Last weekend stood a true blue testament to February in Victoria – 40 degree day – perfect beach weather. By the time mid-week approached, unceremonious gales were blowing hard, rustling up the trees, pulling down the leaves and whistling in the wind. By Friday a swell had developed with thunderstorms and rain plaguing the city relentlessly. Then the weekend rolled in and the newspapers were splashed with headlines declaring flash-flooding across the city!

With the unpredictable state of Melbourne’s summer at the moment it makes judging what’s to be served for dinner, a rather tough ask! I have been juggling dishes in the past weeks, serving up a hearty Beef Goulash with Potato Mash one day, then a light Prawn and Bacon Fettuccine with Lemon and Feta the next, going from Winter to Summer, and back and forth – all in the span of one week!

Winter months see us toiling away, utilising the oven a whole lot – allowing the heat to permeate the kitchen and warm up the house while roasts crisp up, stews and casseroles bubble, and rich, creamy sauces simmer.

Contrastingly, light, tide-me-over meals of summer are designed simply to satisfy and stave away hunger and do-away with endless hours spent in a hot, sticky kitchen! It is usually the time of year people are keen to go-green – embrace vegetarianism, pack away the roasting pans and the Dutch-ovens, replacing them with brand new gas bottles for the barbecue and serve up an array of foods that can be served cold and prepared with minimalistic use of the stove top and oven.

Everyone eagerly awaits the arrival of summer, especially after the long, cold months of dreary winter – so when it heats up most folks transport their ingredients and dinnerware outdoors to bask the sun and enjoy the warmth.

While Melbourne’s summer this year has far-from-lived up to its expectations, here are some handy-hints to help you along your way, should summer come-a-calling!

Dips, Cheese, Cold Cuts, Deli Meats, Crackers, Flat Bread and Anti-Pasto usually feature heavily as snacky-foods that can instantaneously be turned into wraps, sandwiches or baguettes and easily toasted or served fresh.

Salads and stir-fry’s are another common feature of summer menus as the incorporate the fresh green leafy vegetables that have sprung into season. Choose from a variety of lettuces, aromatic herbs, crunchy carrots, juicy cucumbers, ripe tomatoes, pearly ears of corn and buttery avocadoes.

All you need then is a zesty dressing to bring it all together and whammo, you have a stunning, simple-to-make summer meal. As for dressings, I avoid the bottled stuff available at supermarkets, as they usually negate the positive points of eating salad since they tend to be full of sugar, preservatives and chemicals that do your body absolutely no good. Oh, and of course they don’t live up to their advertised expectations either!

Homemade dressings are as simple as mixing a few of your favourite flavours together and experimenting. Favourite concoctions I like to whip up include Red-Wine Vinaigrette Dressing (Red Wine Vinegar, Olive Oil, Dried Italian Herbs, Salt and Pepper), Creamy Balsamic Dressing (Olive Oil, Balsamic Dressing and Mayonnaise) and Honey-Mustard Dressing (Honey, Seeded Mustard, Olive Oil, White Vinegar and Dried Italian Herbs).

The good thing about these dressings are apart from the Creamy Balsamic, is that all the others can be made in large batches and stored in squeeze-bottles to be used over a period of time since the ingredients are shelf-stable and do not require any refrigeration.

Please note, because the Creamy Balsamic contains mayonnaise and therefore requires can be stored for up to a week, refrigerated.

All this talk of summer and no mention of a barbecue! Seems ludicrous eh? There is no way that living Down Under one can ever possibly forget the all integral barbecue that is essential to any Aussie summer experience!

The Australians are masters of the grill. You name it and they will find a way of chucking it on the barbecue, and infusing the characteristic smoky, charcoal flavour. It doesn’t take much to get you hooked!

In my three years in Australia I have seen everything from eggs being cooked on the Barbie to stuffed eggplants! Possibly the greatest thing about barbecuing is that it requires very little prep-work and barely any cleaning up after. All you need to have a few basic ingredients handy. It is best to keep your pantry stocked for summer with the following, since most of these will last you well through summer and beyond. Ketchup (or Tomato Sauce), BBQ Sauce, Honey, Mustard of your choice, Mixed Dried Herbs, Paprika, Packaged Lemon Juice, Sea Salt and Cracked Pepper.

With these few ingredients, you can create magical marinades that will have you jumping up and down with excitement, along with family and friends. Marinades are easy to make, simply use ingredients keeping in mind their individual flavour profiles. Take French mustard – it tends to typically have a sharp, poignant edge with a creamy texture, so it is best balanced by Honey – a rich, sweet, glossy ingredient that will contrast and thus marry well. To finish the marinade and give it complexity, a herb like Rosemary, that is hardy and buxom (able to stand up to the heady flavours of Mustard and Honey) is perfect.

Summer brings us bountiful, succulent fruits and these are obviously delicious eaten as-is, but also lend themselves to a variety of dishes. Fruit in summer is best used to spice up salads as well as marinades for meats that go straight onto the Barbie without too much fussing.

A couple of winning salads use fruit. Why not try sliced/ chopped apples as you would in a Waldorf Salad, or segmented orange with sliced fennel and rocket doused in olive oil and red-wine vinegar.

Another of my favourite summer salads incorporates watermelon which is just brilliant – cooling you down almost immediately. Almost 90 per cent of a watermelon is comprised of – you guessed it – water! So it is immediately refreshing. Pair cubes of watermelon with chiffonade of mint, a hint of lemon juice and crumbled feta and you are in for a real treat – it’s great on its own as well as with steak.

Stone fruit that is amply available around summertime like Nectarines, Peaches, Plums and Apricots are simply gorgeous when used in salsas, pesto, chimmi-churri and even in chunky salad dressing since it adds a wonderful natural sweetness and a kiss of summer to these accompaniments that are best served with grilled meats.

When cooking/ marinating meat for the barbecue stone fruit can be incorporate too, great for adding moisture and flavour to the meat. Try adding chunks of stone fruit in between skewers or kebabs as a zesty alternative to capsicum/ onion or why not stuff a loin of pork with de-seeded stone fruit along with herbs for a sensational roast.

Prawn and Bacon Fettuccine with Chilli, Lemon and Feta

Great for Melbourne’s hot summer nights when the last thing you want to be doing is slaving over a hot stove for hours. This dish take less than 10 minutes to cook from start to finish, simply put your kettle on to boil, dunk your pasta in, and by the time you pasta is cooked (approx. 8 minutes) your sauce is ready to go.

This recipe is especially good if you are hankering for a filling feed minus all the drama. But don't trust me... try it yourself!

Ingredients: 200 g Prawns, shelled and deveine; 2-3 rashers bacon, sliced into thin strip; 200 g Fettuccine, boiled as per packet instructions; 1 small onion thinly sliced; 2 tsp chilli flake; 1 ½ heaped tsp dried Italian herbs; 2 tsp minced garlic (I like it strong, tone it done if you so wish; 1 tsp ginger (optional); 2 tbsp lemon juice (bottled is fine, but fresh is great if you can be bothered);White Wine Vinegar; ½ cup pouring cream; 1 tbsp Olive Oil; 100 g Feta, crumbled; Handful of Pimento Olives roughly chopped; Mint and Basil leaves, chiffonade to garnish; Salt and Pepper to taste

Method: Heat the olive oil in a skillet and sauté the onions, garlic and ginger. Add the bacon and cook until crisp. To the same pan add the chilli flakes and dried Italian herbs, the white wine vinegar, lemon juice and cream and stir. Cook on a low heat until it starts to bubble, when it does add the prawns and stir. The prawns only need 3-4 minutes to turn completely pink at which stage they are cooked through. Quickly toss in the boiled fettuccine, season with salt and pepper and add in the sliced olives. Plate up and garnish with mint, basil and feta.

Eating India

It has been two weeks since I have been back in Melbourne but the taste of India and bustling Bangalore remain sweet in my memory, as I am sure they will be for the rest of the year. All the more reading Chitrita Banerji's, Eating India is adding to it all, enhancing the vibrant image of India.

The trip was a furry of rekindling my food affair with local favourites amidst a chaotic schedule that involved three weddings (One in Delhi and Pune, one in Bangalore and Chennai and one from start to finish in Bangalore), as well as introducing my boyfriend to them for the very first time. And you know what they say, first impressions are everything, so I was eager to take him to the best-of-the-best, institutions that have stood the test of time.



Breakfast is easily the most important meal of the day, especially when you are travelling and have a whole day of discoveries ahead of you to be made.

Konark on Residency Road is the best place in town to score South Indian delights ranging from the humble plain dosa (thin, flat pancake made from fermented rice flour) with coconut chutney and sambar to masala dosa (stuffed with cumin-spiced potatoes), idlis (steamed rice flour like sponge-cakes), vadhas (deep-fried doughnuts made from lentil flour) to puri-palya (deep-fried bread, inflated to look like UFOs, served with spiced potatoes) and channa-bhatura (larger UFOs served with chick-pea curry).

Although 100% vegetarian - this place has my stamp of approval, and you know this means a lot. In years past, Airlines that sits on Lavelle Road and St. Mark's Road cross junction, used to be my preferred spot for a hit of South Indian loving, but the last two visits to Bangalore have made me realise like my family that the standard has really dropped and their is really no point in returning to the old hangout.

Konark impresses not only with the food, but their range of freshly-squeezed fruit juices are phenomenal with flavours to choose from like Sweet Lime, Grape, Watermelon, Orange, Apple to Lime.


In the picture above is a plate of Papdi Chaat, one of many kinds of Indian street fast-foods that are referred to as Chaat principally containing crispy deep-fried papad that comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and brittle textures, a variety of spiced powder including chilli and chaat powder, yoghurt to soothe, and garnished with fresh coriander. One of my favourite haunts is Neetu's on Commercial Street.



There is one and only one place to eat the perfect Gulab Jamun and that is at Bhagat Rams Sweet Shop on Commercial Street. The shop has been around for decades, the only thing that remains changed is the location a couple of blocks down in what used to be called the 'Tunnel of Love'.

Possibly the city's most busy confectioner, they produce a range of North Indian and South Indian sweets at a standard that is far superior to that of any of their competitors.



Bhutta is the local term for char-grilled corn on the cob that is cooked on burning embers from coal fires fanned by vendors on wheelable carts. The smoke emitting from the burning coals gives the corn a characteristic smoky flavour and aids in gently blistering the tight skins covering the individual pearls of corn, yielding a sweet taste as you bite in. After the corn is char-grilled it is wiped with a brush that is dipped in a mixture of lime, salt and chilli. The result is a tangy, cheek sucking oooh-ahh flavour that is absolutely unique and oh-so addictive.

What kind of trip to India could possibly be complete without sampling a variety of kebabs ? Kebabs serve as the appetiser portion of the Indian meal and are a North Indian concept. Kebabs usually refer to morsels of meat off or on the bone that have been marinaded or spiced, cooked and then served with lime and a dipping sauce of some kind. Quite often kebabs are skewered, boneless pieces of chicken, meat or fish that are cooked in a tandoor, a North Indian method of cooking that is attributed to the Afghans, the tradition having travelled down with Alexander.


Rosagulla - probably the most famed food the Bengali community has to offer the world. This sweet was invented by K.C. Das and is till date run by the same family, obviously having been passed down in generations with stores having opened in cities across India. Bangalore was graced with a store in the '80's die to a limit on the usage of milk.

The sweet is made from paneer (Indian version of cottage cheese) that is fried and then placed in a sugar syrup, so as to absorb the sweet juice.



Keerkidham (above) is yet another Bengali sweet, not as famous as the Rosagulla, but tastier in my opinion. The centre is a cotton-candy pink and the texture much softer and supple than that of the chewy Rosagulla, not to mention it is not as sickeningly sweet.


The thali is very much a creation of South India and is characterised by several small bowls containing various sambar, rasaams (curries/ gravies), cooked vegetable, cooked meat and usually accompanied with a range of starches in a certain order. Rice most definitely features at the start usually progressing to chapati or roti and then curd-rice to finish. Sometimes Biryani maybe included if it is a lavish thali.

Below is another picture of a thali (my best friend enjoying her meal), but served straight onto a banana leaf in the traditional style, minus the bowls. Both are typically South Indian styles of eating, the one above simply a more modernised approach to eating.

India – Land of Contradictions

Often when foreigners talk to me of India they point at urban Bangalore – my hometown with its sprawling malls, filled with pretentious European brands flaunting obscenely priced designerware, the pubs and bars well stocked with exotic liquor and the cafes and restaurants proffering plates of food as varied as Spanish Tapas to Japanese Tepankayi, out to the city’s well-to-do men, women and children that spend money without much thought. Simply put they are used to everything being served to them on a silver platter, while foreigners say “this is not the real India, the real India lives in villages and slums”.

To me, that is not the reality of the situation. In my minds eye there are two India’s one that forms the playground of the rich, and the other is the never ending obstacle course that the poor, lower-middle and middle class struggle to overcome and leapfrog over.

The irony of it all is having grown up and spent most of my life in India, I, like most of India's upper class learnt how to shut out the other India, choosing only to see what was in the India created for us – the fortunate and the secure.

Living in houses of considerable proportions, accustomed to running water – both hot and cold, electricity to power all the innumerable gadgets that the 21^st Century has to , rich Indians go about their daily lives oblivious to the ‘other’ India that exists only footsteps away.

In some sense, the two worlds collide, as domestic staff are employed in and around the house. Maids, cooks, gardeners, watchmen and drivers live and work alongside the rich, serving and attending to their every need, yet indifference reigns supreme.

The strangeness of the situation is further exaccerabted as I have been living in Australia for the last three years. With every yearly visit to India – my home – the disparity of it all seems larger than life, yet within no time I slip back into the general, accepted upper class way of life.

Personally, at the core of India’s problems is our treatment of the poor in terms of opportunities – literacy, food, health and sanitation – it seems like a solution or improvement is decades away. Yet, what plagues me is that inversely, the ‘other’ India is raring to go – on its way to becoming a globally recognised economic powerhouse with extremely innovative technology.

Interestingly we (Indians) lay enormous blame on the corrupt government and politics within our country, and I am not claiming to be any different, but the point to be made is that the private business and technology sector has managed to create a massive platform for itself, so much so it has become globally recognised, yet with regard to issues of our own people we have a long way away to go to bridge the gap between the rich and poor, moreover for the poor to be able to live according to an internationally accepted humane standard of living.

As a chef, food writer and food, wine and travel enthusiast the paradox of the rich eating luxuriously well in India while countless numbers out there starve or barely get by with one meal a day is an extremely daunting and self -loathing. Ironically, this is the premise of how the two India’s live in synchrony, side by side, day in and day out for the world to gasp in wonder.

I am but one human being – yet I am one Indian with a fighting spirit, voice and hope for a brighter future for my country. The truth of the matter is that the children of India need our help. The country is home to nearly 44 % of the world’s malnourished children and many do not have access to a single meal in a day. If food is not available, education is neglected, perpetuating the vicious cycle of poverty. Not only is their right to life under threat, but also their right to development.

Though there is still a tremendous need for increased efforts on the part of Governments, legislatures and societies before the state of the world’s children improves, some progress has already been made. In November of 2001, the Supreme Court of India passed an order mandating that "Cooked mid-day meal is to be provided in all the government and government-aided primary schools in all states of the country." This gave rise to what has been termed the ‘mid-day meal scheme’.

Today, the mid-day meal scheme in India, reaches out to an estimated 120 million children in government and government aided primary schools and is one of the most successful school lunch programs in the world. The success of the scheme can be attributed to public-private partnerships nurtured and developed by State Governments of the country, in which non-profit children’s organizations such as Akshaya Patra act as the implementing arm of the government. This approach has been so effective that NGOs today play a significant role in the scheme. Akshaya Patra alone reaches out to 1.2 million children across the country, an estimated 1% of the total number of nationwide beneficiaries.

YOU can make a difference. All you need to do is click on the link to Akshaya Patra and donate. A contribution of just Rs. 525 equivalent to US $/AUS $ 11.90 will help feed a child for a year.

http://www.akshayapatra.org/