Halifax is a bit nippy, eh.

My dear little peach pies,

Well, I made it into Canada. I had a wretched time saying goodbye to everyone I met during my last nine months living in the backwoods of Massachusetts (my Halifaxian friend Abby rather helpfully pointed out that I could have had a baby in that time). However, fresh beginnings are exciting. Yes indeed! New city, new flatmates, new job, and new food.

The first night I was here, Abby cooked me fresh linguine with lemon zest, basil, smoked ham, and cream. We drank red wine and had a haphazard catch up on the last six years. It was a pretty simple dish but it was exactly what I needed in a time of transition - and somehow that magical alchemy of a familiar face, carbs and alcohol made me feel right at home. Brilliant.

I'm only here in Halifax until Saturday, so I asked Abby what dishes might be considered uniquely Halifaxian so I could sample some new things while I'm here. Unfortunately she wasn't able to volunteer many options, as not many exist. One thing she did mention was the famous (infamous?) Donair. According to good old Wikipedia, a donair is a variation on the doner kebab. It was originally introduced in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the early 1970s. A restaurant called King of Donair claims to have been the first to serve this version in 1973. The owners of King of Donair had originally tried selling Greek Gyro sandwiches, but had a hard time selling them so replaced the lamb with beef and the tzatziki with a sweet garlic sauce, thus inventing the Donair.

Well how 'bout that? I have a feeling I might need to have a few beers before attempting to consume this Canuk delicacy. Any thoughts, my little sausages? I'll let you know whether this culinary adventure eventuates or not... If you care to cast a vote or simply volunteer an opinion, you can comment on this post or email me: dorisplum(at)gmail.com.

Love, Doris

Philly Cheesesteak TICK

I recently enjoyed my first authentic Philly Cheesesteak. I was on my way back from a weekend trip to Washington DC, and took a little detour to Philadelphia on the way home to sample this unique American... well I use the term "delicacy" loosely.

For the uninitiated, a Philly Cheesesteak consists of thinly sliced strips of steak and melted cheese in a long roll.

It's been around since the 1930s, with various iterations over the years (it was originally served minus cheese, with chopped steak instead of sliced).

Whilst there are many cheesesteak places in Philadelphia - and indeed, throughout the States - there is a particularly fierce rivalry between Pat's and Geno's.

I chose Geno's, for no real reason at all. It's a hole-in-the-wall style place with bright red tiling, a line-cook who looks like he's spent some time in a local penitentiary, and "We Support Our Troops" plastered across every formica surface. Other gems included: "This is America, when ordering please speak English," and "Land of the Free BECAUSE of the Brave."

Poetic, isn't it?

So anyway, the cheesesteak. I was a bit scared of the Cheese Whiz variety, despite the NY Times calling this canned orange monstrosity "the sine qua non of cheesesteak connoisseurs." I went for the provolone option instead. I was pretty excited about trying out this iconic dish, but... I really can't think of much to say about it.

There was meat. There was cheese. And there was bread. It was well cooked but not imaginatively so. Nor was I expecting it to be. It's a Philly cheesesteak. Ta-da! Ticked off my list. I bet kids *love* these things, they are easy to chew and pretty bland and inoffensive. I think that's part of the reason for the intense cheesesteak love; people have all this nostalgia leftover from childhood cheesesteak experiences.

I'm sorry Philadelphians - it just didn't light my fire. Or as the lovely Sarah Jane would say, "It didn't exactly blow my skirt up." Cheesesteak lovers, please don't hunt me down for saying this on the interwebs. Remember, Philadephia is the city of brotherly love... Hmm? No?

A White Christmas

My friend John has a penchant for white food.

Mashed potatoes, vanilla icecream, whipped cream, tapioca pudding. If it's pale and mushy, you can count him in. If it's sweet, even better. I was staying with John and his partner Richard (two of my all-time favourite people) in New York over the Christmas holiday, and my parents flew over from New Zealand to see me. Mum is a master of making this iconic New Zealand dessert called a pavlova - a white dessert! - so I thought I would take the opportunity to learn how it's done.

Pavlova is a meringue cake; it's kind of crunchy on the outside and has a marshmallowy centre. The whole thing is covered in whipped cream, and normally you would put a tart fruit on top (say, kiwifruit or strawberries) to offset the sweetness. For my friend John though, fruit of any kind would only serve as a blemish on the horizon of this vast white landscape of cake, so I made mine au naturel. Back home, a pavlova is always made in summer because winter is too damp to sustain decent egg-whippy volume. You want your beaten eggwhites BIG, like Lynn of Tawa's hair (that was an in-joke for the kiwis). Anyway, here in the States the winters are much drier so feel free to try this out right now.

The pavlova was of course named after the ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured to New Zealand and Australia in 1926. There is no evidence to suggest she ever ate the dessert named in her honour. I have read that she was rather fond of roast beef sandwiches, so perhaps dessert was not her thing. In any case, here we have it:

3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup castor sugar
3 teaspoons cornflour

• Preheat oven to 150°C (or 300°F).
• Beat egg whites until the form stiff peaks. Use an electric beater because otherwise your arm will drop off.
• Stiff peaks a-go? Ok. Add castor sugar very gradually while still beating. This should take about ten minutes all up, and the end result should be smooth and glossy. Mine sort of looked like a Mikala Dwyer sculpture, it was just gorgeous.
• Slowly beat and add vinegar, vanilla and cornflour.
• All mixed in? Ok. Spoon it out onto cooking paper on a tray. It should be a pile of sludgy white glory about the diameter of a dinner plate.
• Bake for 45 minutes, then open the door and leave to cool in the oven.
• Whip your cream, pile it onto top, decorate with fruit and there you have it.

It doesn't keep long, which isn't normally a problem. John devoured about three slices of the stuff in one sitting, which I think is a stunning endorsement for this pav. Try it out sometime this year - it can be one of your new year resolutions. What do you think, my little pumpkins?

Love, Doris

Visions of sugarplums danced in their heads...

There is a *raging* furore in the dance world right now about sugarplums.

For those who haven't been privy to the latest Fat is a Feminist Issue drama, Alastair Macauley of the New York Times wrote in a review of Balanchine's Nutcracker that; "Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many; and Jared Angle, as the Cavalier, seems to have been sampling half the Sweet realm." Ringer went on the Today show to respond to the jibes, and Macauley wrote a follow up article a few days later to defend his stance against the fatties. The dance world divided! Anorexia! Freedom of speech! Lycra!

Meanwhile I was just getting hungry. What the hell IS a sugarplum exactly, and how do I get my hands on one? So I did a little research, and my darlings, I present it to you with much joy and holiday spirit.

SO: Sugarplums belong to the comfit family, a confection traditionally composed of tiny sugar-coated seeds. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word sugarplum thusly: "A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugared and variously flavoured and coloured; a comfit." The earliest mention of this particular food is 1668. The term also has another meaning "Something very pleasing or agreeable; esp. when given as a sop or bribe," which dates to 1608. According to the food historians, the word plum in Victorian times referred to raisins or dried currants, not plums as we think of them today.

And here is another reference:

"Sugarplums were an early form of boiled sweet. Not actually made from plums...they were nevertheless roughly the size and shape of plums, and often had little wire stalks' for suspending them from. They came in an assortment of colours and flavours, and frequently, like comfits, had an aniseed, caraway seed, etc. at their centre. The term was in vogue from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, but is now remembered largely thanks to the Sugarplum Fairy, a character in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet (1892.)"---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 329).

In the interests of experimentation, I plan to make sugarplums this weekend, and post the results. Email "Sugarplum me, lady" to dorisplum@gmail.com to receive your very own sugarplum, boxed and delivered. I might even put a ribbon on it, if you're lucky.

Much love and many kisses, Doris.

Doris Plum in a nutshell (ba-dom chhhh)

My darlings. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Doris Plum, and I like food; buying it, cooking it, writing about it, eating it, talking about it. I'm a New Zealander living in Massachusetts, shortly moving to Canada.

Some meandering thoughts to get us started:

• Skim milk is the devil, and artificial sweetener will probably kill you in the end. Although I quite like the packaging for Sweet'n'Low. I think it's the colour; that sickly pink is strangely alluring, it reminds me of the bunny suit from A Christmas Story.
• If I could eat one food for the rest of my life it would be avocados, closely followed by roast chicken (skin on, thank you).
• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a god among men, and Emeril Lagasse might be a secret misanthrope. I love how his TV audience screams like little girls whenever he says the word "garlic" though. That shit cracks me up.
• People should know where their food comes from. Go to the farmers' market even if it's raining, you goddamn wuss. Make it a social occasion. I remember arranging to meet my bestie Sarah Jane at the Sunday markets a few years ago. It had all the makings of a Shakespearian comedy of errors (minus the cross dressing) or maybe an American sitcom (minus the cross dressing). I was waiting at the Chaffers Park markets, meanwhile SHE was lingering at the peach stand of the Willis Street markets. Sarah Jane waited by those peaches for 45 minutes so she could deliver a dirty peach-related one-liner when I arrived. Alas it was not to be. And the little filth-monger never divulged what the one-liner was. It's time to spill, S.J.
• Eat more vegetables than you think you need. Brussels sprouts are gorgeous and deserve their own backlit display stands. The majestic leek is worthy of seventeen sonnets. And don't get me started on the shy, rustling beauty of kale. Oh, kale.
• I think it's bizarre that people add marshmallows to sweet potato casserole (when I say "people" I really just mean "Americans." Marshmallows are big here, as are some of the people).
• One day I want to make turducken. And when I do, I shall write about it here in the Adventures of Doris Plum. I'll also write fun food facts from the history books, home kitchen wins, beer write-ups, restaurant reviews, food-related present ideas, and some general foodie rants when I'm feeling snarly. Please join me.