It rains in Chexbres

Le Baron Wine Bar, Chexbres, Swiss Alps.

Just a small coffee table between us now. Ten years and ten thousand miles apart felt like only yesterday, when all we had were memories - prized, collectible possessions, once given to us with such generosity.

Silver threads of rain connect us, cover the lake, tie us together. “Why does it rain every time we meet?” I ask.
“It rains three hundred days a year in Chexbres,” you reply, ever practical.
“No,” I laugh, “that’s not true — it would rain in the Sahara if you and I had a coffee there.”

We order cognac, local cheese, fresh bread. What defence could I possibly have against this open smile, these dark eyes? None I could ever master.

You, me, and Geneva Lake. Nothing between us. Not even a small coffee table.

Sweet and cheesy story

You kept asking me why I want to go. You’d say I always leave you, and I’d remind you: I always come back. I will come back again. I just have to go and see where the Champs-Élysées flows into the Arc de Triomphe, and sit under the chestnut tree.

When I return, I’ll bring you all my stories and we’ll laugh together. You know me - such a tragic case, always stumbling into ridiculous situations, unprepared, naive, childlike. Maybe that’s the reason I go: to travel, to learn, perhaps even to grow up.

When I return, I’ll bring gifts from rolling lavender fields and the Côte d’Azur. My skin will still carry the salty sea air and the taste of wine baths.

My stories will be sweet and cheesy. French stories always are - pastry stories, golden with butter and dipped in chocolate mousse. There will be wine too, in glasses, bottles, and barrels.

And a bottle for you and me will go so well with the sweet and cheesy.

France and me, Chez Janou

I didn’t want the night to slip away. I wanted to hold the warm spring air in my lungs and the red wine in my veins.

Chez Janou - bright yellow walls, a handful of tables under chestnut trees. Laughter, small talk, plates carried outside, and the sense that Paris needs no staging. Life was simply unfolding around us.

Glass in hand, I asked the bartender, “Tell me about French wine.”
He looked at me, his dark southern eyes lit with laughter.
“All you need to know,” he said, “is that there are two types of wine: French, and all others.”

Comi-kitsch: Herring in Fur Coat

Italians grew up with ai frutti di mare; the French with boeuf bourguignon. My iron-curtained past is personified by Herring in Fur Coat - a pickled herring dressed in seven layers of pungent veggie swagger.

Nothing embodies the kitsch of Soviet life - the outrageously tacky, overdone ways - better than this playful dish. Its taste and colour stood in stark contradiction to the drabness of daily life. Naively optimistic, desperate to inject brightness into the grey Comi-collage, people served this magenta salad as the centrepiece of any gathering or celebration.

The Empire may be gone, but this souvenir from the Motherland endures. From communal flats in Kiev and Moscow to New York, Melbourne and Monte Carlo - where the people go, Herring in Fur Coat goes too.

You may think your palate isn’t ready for the experiment. But baked beets, mixed with grated waxy potatoes and carrots, boiled eggs, and homemade mayonnaise, all layered over pickled herring laced with onion and dill, make for a surprisingly delightful entrée.

Borsch - the most important of possessions

For most, it’s just an odd-looking beetroot soup. For me, it’s much more than that.

Kiev - the old town perched high on its steep hills, clasped by the river. In summer, its narrow streets are drenched in lilac and chestnut blossom, generous under the sun. In winter, snow falls in heavy flakes, turning the city shiny, grim, and mysterious in the dark.

Kiev is grandma’s borsch. Flushed pink and pungent, impossible to forget, impossible not to return to.

At twenty-three, I crossed Australian border security with two hundred dollars, a suitcase, a new husband, and a baby bump. Who needs more to start a life? What I didn’t know was that beetroot soup came too, undeclared. It was the most important of all possessions.

Decades later, it still is. Because the most important possession is who you are.

Walk, Don't Run

I was having breakfast at 12:30. On a Wednesday.

My God, I love a late breakfast. Is there anything worth enjoying before nine in the morning? Not by me. Of course, I know this road leads to a cruel reality: sooner or later, I’ll be back to dry toast and scorching coffee with my eyes closed at 6:30 a.m. Inevitably. But for now, we’re in the “Walk, Don’t Run” kind of mood.

Literally — that’s the café. A bit Japanese, a little posh, like most things in Armadale. Everything on the menu is “activated” or “cold-pressed,” the Melbourne gospel of health.

I never bother with either. It feels rebellious enough to order plain eggs in a place this pure and polished.

My companion, admittedly trendier than me, chose the porridge — quinoa, almond milk, poached pear, rhubarb, pomegranate, goji berries. Seventeen dollars and a halo.

I’m not judging. I just hope we can stay friends after that.

And maybe, on the way out, I’ll ask for a deconstructed coffee — if only to smooth over the quinoa between us.

Good intentions - Organica Cafe

I am full of good intentions, I truly am. Healthier habits. Earlier walks. Lighter breakfasts. Tomorrow.

This morning, of course, it was raining — and even my dog refused the beach. So I congratulated myself on compromise: Organica, temple of green juice and activated virtue. Even reading the menu feels like biting into an organic apple.

I began nobly with an espresso and a juice of every fruit available. But then the woman at the next table received her French toast: buttery, crisp, fragrant with rhubarb and maple syrup.

No, of course not, I told myself. But to the waiter I said: Yes, please.

So there it was: a breakfast of one healthy juice and one guilty, golden, berry-crowned French toast.

Oh well. I’ll have a celery stick for lunch. Promise.

Poached quinces - a winter's antidote

If the reader prefers, this can be read simply as a recipe. One that coaxes ruby-red tenderness from the hard and inedible fruit.

When I first came across it in Gourmet Traveller, I was desperate for an antidote to the winter blues.

Winter is not the kind of fair you buy a ticket to. Like it or not, you’re in attendance, with or without your scarf and gloves. The daily orchestra of rain, with its endless wind chorus, sets sadness even in the most joyful of souls. This questionable composition plays on for months, until its natural end.

Deep in suburbia, I was ready for battle. Armed with vanilla, a cinnamon quill, and lemons, I set my eyes on a pair of quinces.

I needed burgundy from the virtues of poaching. Instead, I found happiness - and a taste of spring itself.

Ingredients

From Gourmet Traveller with some small changes.

800g organic coconut sugar

1 vanilla bean, split

2 lemon, cut in half

2 cinnamon quills

3 star anise

2 or 3 large quinces

Method

Place all ingredients apart from the quinces in an ovenproof pot and bring to the boil. 
Peel, cut and quarter the quinces, remove the cores.  Add to you a pot and bring to a simmer. Place in oven until quince are the desired tenderness and colour (between 2 to 3 hours for a ruby colour). To get a deep burgundy, leave them to cool completely overnight in oven.

The Juicy Story of Cherry Dumplings

Of course, there are better ways to tell a story - with intelligent characters, sophisticated dialogue, and a well-designed plot.

This little tale, though, is all about dumplings. Tender pastry morsels filled with cherries.

Back in Kiev, growing up, they were too lavish to have at any other time but cherry season, when the summer sun gave its abundance.

At holiday houses, it was a family affair - hours around the garden table, folding small pockets of pastry, sometimes with blueberries, but mostly cherries, the favorite and the affordable.

Fresh from the markets, they came in rattan baskets, carrying the sun in their burgundy weight. You’d split the flesh, prise out the stone, and carefully collect the thick, sweet juice for sauce. Each cherry was wrapped in a delicate pastry floret, sealing in its nectar.

Allowed to eat with my hands, cherry juice streaked my face and dripped down my fingers.

That’s how I learned: the messy things in life are often the best.

 

Mr Mister

Dear reader,

In my flavor-hunting mission, I come to you with a warning: Mr Mister plays with his food.

I’m not against breaking table etiquette now and then, but an open omelette with roasted artichokes? That’s a blow to morning eggs de la classique. And who can be expected to behave with dignity when pear and blue cheese appear on the same plate? The final blow: confit tomatoes. I won’t even mention the prosciutto, lightly grilled for that matter.

My dear, refined friend suffered her own ordeal: baked beans married to caramelised pear.

Naturally, in protest, we ate croissants with extra coffee - and, under duress, ordered lime–coconut–pistachio balls to go.

We cannot be blamed.

Apple and blueberry pancakes

These small, sweet pancakes were my favorite growing up. I remember whole apple slices being browned in the still-sizzling pan. Fond memories of the place where I grew up, in the country that doesn't exist. 

I often think I have two lives. My first twenty years spent on steep hills above Dnepr. Heavy chestnut tree blossoms and heady lilac flood the streets as you climb back up from the river. Kiev. The next twenty-five are coming to an end in sunburned, windswept Melbourne. 

One day, there will be a pen, sharp and witty, factual and insightful, that will tell the whole story. Chaotic, intense, and often agonizing times that pushed a whole generation away from home. 

And I, for now, just keep my food memories to connect what I had been with what I have become. 

Life of a working guy sandwich

It is not terribly exciting to be a sandwich. Like it or not, you need to know your place in the stylish world of delectables.

You can’t compare yourself to the ever-popular desserts. Those snobby chocolate types, draped in strawberries, won’t even look your way. Nor can you compete with fancy salads and hearty soups — they get to play with ingredients, stay on trend, and make themselves look handsome.

It’s hard to be noticed when you’re a working-guy sandwich. All you can offer is a simple filling and an even simpler purpose: to feed the office types rushing about their daily business. They’ll have their moment later with sophisticated dinner sorts, but now all they want is a quick bite.

But let me be honest. If you’re a sandwich from Earl Canteen - made to order, with roast pumpkin and gorgonzola piccante, or free-range pork belly with apple, cabbage and fennel — you’ve made it. You’re on par with the sit-down dinners served at night, with dim lights and grown-up conversation.

I am one of those selected few, handmade at Earl Canteen — an aristocrat of a sandwich.

I know I won’t survive past lunchtime. But isn’t that the point? A life short, but spectacular, where every moment counts.

Lake House

What is it they do, these Lake House people? You think you know yourself, but you don’t. Get organised, book a lunch. Plan the drive - just an hour from Melbourne.

Start with tiny entrée morsels. Order another. Then give in: the full tasting menu, all nine courses to dessert. Somewhere along the way you don’t notice, and you’re drunk.

The lake, the bright wooden cottages - you and all of it, one. Stay the night. You think you should feel remorse, but you don’t. Instead, you throw your credit card out.

For the love of pizza

This story is not about how we met at +39 Pizza Bar on a bustling Melbourne laneway for the love of pizza.
It is not about how too much food was ordered. Food restraint is not my forte. This time I blame it on the Italian accent—perhaps rehearsed, but still, not helpful when it comes to saying no to a plate of bruschetta.

Neither is this a story about the bottle of red we shared. I am not even going to mention how it had a grape-stomping party in my head the morning after.

This is a short story about moments of life, little stills stitched together by the thread of time.

Moments like these are the brightest threads in that thick, strangely cut fabric.