Posh Nosh or a blast from the past.

[kuskiwi]

Out last night with the "would be's if they could be's" of the town. Not us as it was a work function, but the other "beautiful people' attending other functions.
The food was all retro but gussied up for the next generations. It was a really good evening and fun and the whole menu was a set tasting menu but served as platters for choose your own. There were two of us in the 70's the rest 50's and down to an apprentice of 18.

There was bone marrow - tarted up and served in cranberry jelly to look like cherries. Toast with a little caviar (not the $100 sort) but pleasant enough, cerviche and really good chicken nibbles - but not full of bone - all flesh and spices.

Mains were fish in coconut, beef cheeks (which appear to be the flavour of the year) and pork belly, Veggies Potato gratin, kale and broccoli and a salad with cheese topping and mini turnips.
Dessert Sticky Ginger Date Pudding and cheesecake styled like Christmas puds.


Every bite was fabulous and hard to keep things simple as we all wanted to try a little of everything Taste buds got a bit confused. What really amused me though was that these were all rather basic items that we ate in our childhood - but they didn't taste this good. What was surprising was the reactions to the actual menu listings. You could almost divide them by generations as to who was familiar with what ingredient. We oldies had eaten bone marrow as kids. The 40-50 didn't like cerviche and the younger ones had no idea what most of the items were and stuck to chicken nibbles and desert.

Luckily I wasn't paying the bill as it was well over the top of what most restaurants would charge here. All in all a good experience.

[Baz Faz]

these were all rather basic items that we ate in our childhood

Apart from the potato gratin I didn't get any food like that as a kid.

Were the veggies overcooked? That is my lasting memory of childhood food. And of "curry" made of left over roast meat.

[kuskiwi]

Baz - I grew up on farms. One was inland the other by the sea plus we were lucky that my grandmother was an exceptional gardener and had created microclimates in various spots around the properties. (she lived on the inland one for close to 80 years).

While basically dairying, the back paddocks which were on rougher terrain always had 'killers' on it - sheep that provided meat (and bone marrow) and closer to the homestead - a small piggery and hen houses and bee hives. To use the buzz word - all organic because there wasn't any other way. The cows ate turnips, kale, pumpkins etc when dry (taints the milk if eaten during production time) and we ate them too. Who ever was working the run off farm by the sea it was one of their allocated tasks to bring crayfish (lobster) or white fleshed fish on special occasions. My father served in the Pacific during the War and came home with 'different' ideas for cooking fish - one of which was to use lemon juice as a cooking agent. The veggie garden was a minor miracle in the climate we had and I never really worked out how she got the seeds/cuttings of what she grew. She saved sufficient seeds every year to grow to feed the extended family and replant the winter feed paddocks.

My mother was never the cook my grandmother was. Soggy cabbage and lumpy white sauce were her specialities.

No caviar in our lives but dried dates were brought in in big slabs. I can still visualise a foot square slab sitting in the food safe. (no refrigerator on the farms until I was about 10) and of course basic spices were imported.

Beef was a real treat and we only ever had it when an animal was injured and had to be put down.

[Baz Faz]

My childhood was nothing to do with farms. My father worked for an international company so we kept being moved around. I was born in South Africa, went to Canada aged 4, England aged 10, back to South Africa aged 13. My most vivid food memories were of the log cabin by a lake we rented in Ontario for a couple of months in summer. I went with my mother. My father took his annual leave with us and came at weekends. There was no electricity in the cabin so no fridge. We had an ice box with blocks of ice cut from the lake in winter. We had plenty of berries from the woods but other food grew short in the days before my father drove up from Toronto. I remember my mother sending me out in the rowing boat to catch bass for our supper. I was 9. I caught grasshoppers for bait and out I went on my own. Imagine the horror nowadays in England at sending a 9 year old out on a lake on his own to catch fish.

[kuskiwi]

Food, how we eat it, how we cook it and how it's prepared has certainly changed over the years. Well done on the fish catching. Do you fish when you can now? You'd been to three countries by 13 - I'd be lucky to have seen 3 very small provinces.

As kids we were the fore runners of the raw food fad The gardens were all fair game for us and depending on who was around and our ages we roamed around the farm playing games. There were no go areas, ie the bull paddock, and the week before Christmas no one was allowed to eat the new peas or Santa would miss calling at the farm but as soon as we got hungry we found the nearest garden and feasted on whatever fruit or nuts were around (there was a walnut cracker in a tin by each of the 4 trees) or pulled veggies and ate them small and sweet. I still eat a lot of my veggies raw. After a few bellyaches we soon learned what was ripe or not. I'd happily eat lemons but the oranges were sour and thin skinned - but still a treat in that climate. In hindsight we were spoiled rotten with choices but the payback was helping at huge picking sessions for bottling or salting down.