My love affair with Joost

Dutch-born Australian Joost Bakker is everywhere. He recently constructed a fire testing building with a 100% recyclable steel frame, strawables as insulation and MGO board cladding for CSIRO. He designed Greenhouse restaurant. He builds residential and commercial buildings. He creates vertical gardens. To top it off, he makes homewares.

I discovered Joost (pronounced “Yoast”) at the Queensland Art Gallery gift shop. His mugs and bowls were perched atop the centre table between the coffee table art books and the post cards. As a new pottery student, I have the habit of feeling walls, rims, feet and curves. When I picked up Joost’s tumbler, it felt good in my hands. I also like the look of raw, unglazed terra cotta on the outside wall with white glaze on the inside and dripping down the rim.

My tumbler, along with the rest of Joost’s tablewares, was sourced from Australian soils and created by local artisans in collaboration with the Dutchman. “I’ve designed this range of tableware as a reminder that food has been harvested, planted and grown,” Joost wrote on his product pamphlet. Because the terra cotta is raw, it will break down and as he put it, “return to the earth.”

Joost also makes bowls, pinch pots and plates available at Gardenista.

Humble abode

19 days have passed since we moved into our Highgate Hill townhouse. Only one box of 104 remains in our garage. We’re well on our way to feeling settled.

To me, settling is about the details.

The timer is primed, the salt and pepper shakers are embracing, the bird tray awaits cocktails.

The map prints welcome friends for Saturday night Mexican feasts and Sunday afternoon perogy-making sessions.

The beer-bottle bookshelf holds hours of entertainment. The glass globes await terrariums, the glass bottles await freshly cut stems.

Except for the occasional library or cafe visit, I’ve been working from home at the dining room table. It’s pretty convenient. 7+ varieties in the cupboard above the stove. Clean toilets. Fridge stocked with hummus and baby cucumbers.

Moving into the office (our second bedroom) upstairs will make my 9-5 more comfortable. I would have been typing away among the books and craft supplies already had it not been for my blunder in the garage last week. I thought I would be clever and take apart the desk on my own and assemble it during my lunch break, amazing Chris upon his evening return. I pulled it apart, unwittingly stripping the screw holes. Hopefully we can reassemble it with L-brackets.

There will be more nesting. A futon awaits us, as well as shelving for the office and garage. We’ll return to Ikea soon, land of meatballs and fake knitting projects.

Making macarons in Mackay

Ah, the macaron. Crunchy on the outside, creamy on the inside. The colourful cloud of almond meal, egg whites and sugar. Very de rigeur in Australia these days, especially considering the popularity of Adriano Zumbo. We Mackayites had the opportunity to learn how to make macarons (not to be confused from macaroons) from trained pastry cook Denise Buller of Macaron Emporium.

On the bench at the delightful cafe Taste Matters, Denise mixed almond meal, icing sugar and food colouring into a paste while heating sugar over a gas flame. She watched the candy thermometer while explaining that many things can go wrong when making macarons: there can be too much moisture, too much humidity, too much heat, too much everything. From what I gathered, the art of macarons is in the precision.

Denise whipped the egg whites in a massive industrial mixer which she said is the only way to go, if only to spare your arms. She slowly poured the melted sugar into the egg whites and then added the mixture to the almond meal. She showed the two methods of piping: straight down and pulling up or spiralling. After sitting to form a crust, the macarons were ready for the oven.

The beauty about macarons is that you can open the oven as many times as you like during baking, according to Denise. When the macarons come away slightly from the paper, they’re ready to come out and cool in preparation for fillings. Denise prepared five flavours: passionfruit, turkish delight, milo, chai latte and orange ganache. Piping the filling felt much easier than piping the cookie.

Kim, Katy and I watched attentively through the demonstration and enjoyed the fruits of Denise’s labour. She’ll be selling her macarons at the Made it Myself Market this Sunday.

Katie’s field guide to Australian food: fruit edition

Here in Mackay, bananas grow in backyards. That’s right. We live in the tropics. In fact, Mackay is a stone’s throw away from the Tropic of Capricorn. The humid climate and fertile soils make for productive growing conditions. Within 100km, you can find coffee, avocados, limes and much more.

Passionfruit
This yellow passionfruit was gifted to me by a lovely local friend. I eat passionfruit the same way I eat a kiwi-cut it in half and dig in with a spoon. The flesh is tart and the seeds are crunchy, which is overall delightful. Passionfruit often tops cheesecake, soufflés and especially pavlovas and it’s latin name, Passiflora edulis, is pretty great in my opinion.

Quince
Difficult to cut, this quince was purchased from the ‘exotic fruit’ section of Woolworths. Otherwise known as Cydonia oblonga, my quince was starchy and tasted somewhere between a green apple and bosc pear. From what I’ve seen in women’s magazines and cookbooks, quince is primarily used in jams, pastes and jellies.

Custard Apple
This fruit tasted like a pine tree. When I sliced it in two in the kitchen, Chris was sitting in the living room and was overtaken by the scent of pine. There were walls between us. Custard Apple is also called bullock’s heart, and I can see why. After peeling away the skin, I found the flesh was rough. After reading more about the Custard Apple, I’m beginning to think that my bullock’s heart wasn’t ripe. Apparently it’s baked in crumbles and cakes, like a non-Custard Apple.

Starfruit
Oh, delicious and redeeming starfruit. Refreshingly sweet and sour, starfruit is known primarily as Carambola. Native to our Northern neighbour Indonesia, starfruit is entirely edible and has a consistency similar to a (not too juicy) grapefruit.

Dragon fruit
Pitaya, commonly known as Dragon fruit (from Chinese huǒ lóng guǒ, “fire dragon fruit”) is the fruit of cactus species. It’s largely flavourless (at least in my opinion). Most dragon fruit that I’ve seen have had white flesh but this one, as you can see, was as pink as a beet. I think it would excellent chopped and frozen as ice cubes.

The wonder of Skype

This morning after Skyping into an Art Song Lab rehearsal, I Skyped my Baba.

Baba has lived in Surrey for decades in the same home where I lived with my parents from birth until age four. My brother and I are her youngest grandchildren. Every summer Peter and I would spend a few weeks with her watching movies on her much-loved pull-out couch, walking about Surrey Central Mall and dropping sour candy into Jones sodas. She would put us to work painting and gardening, which was dreadful then but now, I wish I could spend more time helping Baba around the house.

When I was in university, I would catch the 99B Line to Commercial Drive and then hop on Skytrain, riding the Expo Line past the ‘Welcome to Burnaby’ flower sign, transit work yard, over the Fraser River and through the industrial/train zone to King George Station. Baba’s house is only a 10 minute walk from the station. We would spend the afternoon eating soup and sandwiches. I miss those times.

Two nights ago I had a dream that Baba’s garden was fully in bloom with multi-coloured poppies, gerbia daisies and hyacinths. The raspberries, tomatoes and peas were ripe for picking. My dream was so vibrant it verged on reality. I knew I needed to hear her voice soon. When I rang she had trouble recognizing my voice at first (I blame Skype) but soon enough we were laughing and smiling while catching up. Thank you Skype, for making it both feasible and inexpensive to call my grandmother in Canada.