Author: Doug Jacquier

Defiance in the dust

/ Doug Jacquier / 4 Comments

Episode 1. (in which a wife becomes a widow)

“They’re Roman Catholics, of course,

All those kids, have to be.

Don’t have any choice really, do they?

My God, what a tribe!

Still, cheaper by the dozen I always say.”

And the tongues clacked even louder

when your husband went to work one day

and his heart sent him home in a coffin.

 

You, the new tribal elder,

with no time to rend your clothes or cut your skin

or wail into the night

survived,

your duty to the children

and your love for the One

(tested in late lonely hours of single terror)

ensuring tomorrow and then tomorrow,

until automatic again.

 

Episode 2. (in which a widow becomes a wife again)

The back door is banging less these days

and the youngest stragglers are drifting from the hearth

as a familiar face comes calling.

To your children you deny blushes

and your diminishing waistline

but, eventually,

you fall in love with his passionate patience

and his belief in you.

 

Episode 3 (in which asbestos taketh away what God has joined together)

A cough got its skates on

and pale Christmas courage

gave us memories of him to live with.

We all came to be with him and you.

You, stronger at your core than us all,

solace to kin and doctors alike,

determined that you were married to a man and not a patient,

laughed as you prayed and liberated Peace

from the clutches of pompous Death.

 

You, the tribal elder,

again no time to rend your clothes or cut your skin

or wail into the night,

survived for him and your duty to the offspring

and your love for the One.

But this time, the late lonely hours did not fill you with terror

but questions

about where you would find automatic tomorrows this time.

And you even dared “Why?”, in your private silence.

 

But in a hot, dusty churchyard

you walked bareheaded

and sang loud your hope of a merciful Heaven,

striding defiantly every inch of the way

as though everything had happened

but nothing would change.

Spiced salmon with yoghurt-herb sauce

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Source: http://www.taste.com.au

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp ground coriander
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 4-8 salmon skin-on portions
  • 2 tbs extra virgin olive oil, divided
  • 3 bunches baby broccoli (about 600g total), thick ends of stems trimmed
  • 1 cup (280g) Greek-style yoghurt
  • 1 lemon, rind finely grated, juiced
  • 2 tbs finely chopped dill
  • 2 tbs sesame seeds, toasted
  • 1/2 cup coriander
  • 1/2 cup dill sprigs

Method

  • Step 1
    Position racks in centre and bottom of oven and preheat oven to 250°C (230°C fan-forced). Place 2 large heavy non-stick baking trays in oven to heat.
  • Step 2
    In a small bowl, mix the ground coriander, cumin, 1½ tsp sea salt flakes and 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper. Coat salmon with 1 tbs oil and season all over with spice mixture.
  • Step 3
    In a large bowl, toss the baby broccoli with the remaining 1 tbs oil and season with salt and pepper.
  • Step 4
    Remove preheated trays from oven. Place salmon, skin-side down, on trays. Scatter baby broccoli around salmon. Roast, rotating trays halfway through cooking, for 12-14 mins or until salmon is cooked through with a rosy centre.
  • Step 5
    While salmon cooks, in a small bowl, whisk yoghurt, lemon rind, 1 tbs lemon juice and chopped dill. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer salmon and baby broccoli to a large platter. Spoon over yoghurt sauce and sprinkle with sesame seeds, coriander sprigs and dill sprigs.

Slow cooker pea and ham soup

/ Doug Jacquier / 1 Comment

Source: http://www.taste,com.au (with some minor amendments from me)

If you haven’t got a slow cooker already, buy one for $50-$60 (the bigger the better) and you’ll find it gets lots of use. This recipe couldn’t be much simpler and tastes amazing on a cold winter’s night.

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 small brown onion, finely chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 2 sticks celery, diced (I used leeks last time)
  • 300g sebago potatoes (or whatever you have), peeled, diced
  • 650g ham hock
  • 1 packet green split peas, washed, rinsed (the original says one cup but if you like your soup spoon-standing-up thick like we do, throw in the whole pack)
  • 3 cups chicken stock
  • 1 dried bay leaf
  • Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, to serve
  • Crusty bread, to serve

Method

  • Step 1
    Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook onion, stirring, for 3 minutes or until softened. Add garlic, celery and potatoes. Cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Transfer to bowl of slow cooker.
  • Step 2
    Add ham hock, peas, stock, bay leaf and 1 litre cold water. Season with pepper. Cover with lid. Cook on high for 6 hours.
  • Step 3
    Remove hock from soup. Remove and discard rind and bone. Shred ham. Return ham to soup. Cook on low for 1 hour or until ham and peas are tender. Serve with parsley and crusty bread.

Spicy tuna pasta bake

/ Doug Jacquier / 1 Comment

Source: http://www.taste.com.au 

Very simple but delicious, this has become a firm family favorite.

Ingredients

  • 300g penne rigate
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 brown onion, finely chopped
  • 700g jar tomato passata
  • 1 tablespoon dried Italian mixed herbs
  • 2 teaspoons white sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons dried chilli flakes
  • 1 cup pitted black olives
  • 425g can tuna in olive oil, drained, flaked
  • 1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese
  • 1/2 cup grated tasty cheese
  • Finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, to serve

Method

  • Step 1
    Preheat oven to 200 C/180 C fan-forced.
  • Step 2
    Cook pasta following packet directions, until almost tender. Drain well. Transfer pasta to a 12-cup-capacity baking dish.
  • Step 3
    Meanwhile, heat oil in a frying pan over high heat. Cook garlic and onion, stirring, for 3 minutes or until light golden. Add passata, herbs, sugar and salt. Season with pepper. Add chilli, to taste. Bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 3 minutes.
  • Step 4
    Pour sauce over pasta in baking dish. Add olives and tuna. Toss to combine. Sprinkle with cheeses. Bake for 25 minutes or until cheese is melted and golden. Serve sprinkled with parsley.

She who brought avocadoes to the sea

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Silent-Time,

returning insistently

on anniversaries of light

and dark.

 

Mirror-Time,

encouraging reflection,

but lacking depth

in the sum of its parts.

 

Shadow-Time,

for those with their backs to the Sun

or those looking over their shoulder

to see where they’ve been.

 

History-Time,

which speaks for itself

in the language of the actors,

especially the victors.

 

I could tell you of a time when She brought avocadoes to the sea

but you would only see its shadow in your mirror and be silent

in the presence of an uncommon history.

 

Me, you and him: A study in disability

/ Doug Jacquier / 2 Comments

I wrote this many years ago when I was running strategic planning sessions for disability agencies.

Yesterday, before we planned the future,

I watched you scan the room

and discreetly re-arrange it

to make his entry as smooth as your own.

 

As the room talked,

you led the listening to him

and planted your thoughts on the borders

of his lifetime garden.

 

At some signal I did not see,

the two of you left and then returned in style,

either having been to the toilet

or to visit the Queen.

 

At lunch, you invited me to sit with you

and share his jokes

and learn that food can be thereabouts

and still sustain.

 

That night, I recited my mantra,

‘To plan is to cease to be a victim’,

but as I lay there sleepless in the dark

I heard myself whistling.

 

In the morning, I arrived before everyone else

so I could clear his pathway

and laughed as he rolled in, without you,

waving his homework like a flag of independence.

I wonder if this is like India?

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From my time in the Kimberley region in the north of Western Australia in the 90’s.

 

I wonder if this is like India;

they say ‘stay too long and you can never leave’.

 

Pindan dust in every crevice

staining my lifeblood indelibly.

 

Wet heat boiling the blood,

aircon the only cold comfort.

 

Tracks embedded in my spine

until the uncorrugated seems suspect.

 

Frustration with the timeless

as an excuse for no tomorrows.

 

The challenge of black history

Fading into right white history.

 

Today’s ‘answers’ perhaps tomorrow’s follies

for me, a ghetto dweller in this forever foreign land.

 

No, this is not like India;

I’ve been leaving since I arrived.

 

Beef, sweet potato and date tagine

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Source: Ross Dobson – ‘The Healthy Slow Cooker’

Note: Gluten free

Ingredients

750g blade steak

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp sweet paprika

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tablespoon corn flour

2 red onions, sliced

1 small sweet potato, peeled and cut into thick rounds

12 dates

2 x 400g cans whole tomatoes, drained

2 tablespoons date syrup (or reasonable substitute 😉)

Handful of coriander leaves

Handful of mint leaves

 

Method

  1. Turn slow cooker on to Low
  2. Trim any excess fat from meat and discard. Cut the beef into cubes and put in slow cooker.
  3. Add the cumin, ginger, cornflour, plus salt and pepper to taste. Use a wooden spoon or a spatula or your hands to mix all the contents together.
  4. Cover mixture with onions, then sweet potato and then dates.
  5. In a bowl, combine tomatoes and date syrup. Roughly mash and add to cooker.
  6. Cover and cook for 6 hours.
  7. Stir gently, transfer to bowls and top with herbs to serve.

Spicy Cajun mince tray bake

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INGREDIENTS

  • 500g premium beef mince
  • 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
  •  2 teaspoons dried oregano
  • 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 red onion, cut into thin wedges
  • 1 green capsicum, finely chopped
  • 400g can red kidney beans, drained, rinsed
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 2 tablespoons boiling water
  • 200g punnet tomato medley, sliced
  • 1 avocado, cut into wedges
  • 2  tablespoons lime juice, plus lime halves to serve
  •  Fresh coriander sprigs, to serve
  • 1/3 cup sour cream, to serve
  •  8 warmed tortillas, to serve

METHOD

Step 1

Preheat oven to 220C/200C fan-forced.

Step 2

Break up mince and spread out onto a large baking tray with sides. Combine seasoning, oregano and cumin in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle over mince. Drizzle with 1/2 the oil. Bake for 5 minutes. Stir well, breaking up mince with a wooden spoon.

Step 3

Reduce oven to 200C/180C fan-forced. Top mince with onion and capsicum. Drizzle with remaining oil. Bake for 10 minutes. Stir well. Add beans. Blend tomato paste with boiling water. Pour over mince mixture. Stir well. Bake for 5 minutes or until beans are heated through. Stir well.

Step 4

Top mixture with tomato, avocado and lime juice. Sprinkle with coriander. Serve with lime halves, sour cream and tortillas.

Stable martial relations

/ Doug Jacquier / 13 Comments

My wife believes in flying saucers.

And cups. And dinner plates. Even the occasional saucepan sails through space towards my beleaguered semi-deaf head. I say ‘semi-deaf’ because my hearing declined significantly after I was run over by that B-double truck on Main St. But I digress.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that our marriage is unstable. Far from it. We live a mainly peaceful and amicable existence on our small farm. We grow a lot of our own food and the weather and the rabbits and the possums let us share in some of this bounty. We supplement our income by agisting horses, not that we make a lot of hay out of that.

No, the problem is my wife’s frustration with what she sees as an irredeemable flaw in my character, namely that her pearls of wisdom, not to mention her specific instructions, don’t seem to arrive at my ears as often as she would like and those that do arrive are somehow transformed into only a fair facsimile of what she believes she originally uttered.

I’m not convinced. For example, we were recently discussing the parlous state of our bank account and she said all of our problems would be solved if we had a million ducks. I pointed out that we didn’t have the borrowing capacity to fund the purchase a million ducks nor the space to raise them without us drowning in a swamp of duck doings. Half the dinner service my parents gave us when we got married was sacrificed on that field of battle.

When she eventually calmed down, she said living with me was like a never-ending game of Chinese whispers. I said it wasn’t fair that she whispered to me in Chinese when she knew I had a hearing deficit. The electric frypan has never been the same since.

Eventually, to keep the peace (or should I say ‘pieces’ of our remaining serviceable crockery), I agreed to have my hearing tested, if only to convince my wife of the error of her whispering ways. A very pleasant young audiologist took me through a series of challenges and she seemed very pleased when I indicated that I could detect a range usually only achievable by dogs and children at a great distance when dinner’s ready. She seemed very confused however when I related a recipe back to her that she seemed somehow to have confused with the Lord’s Prayer. University standards these days; what can you say?

She recommended hearing aids, for what seemed to her the very reasonable price of handing over our firstborn grandchild and the deed to the farm. I said I’d sleep on it and went home to my wife with what I believed were some very creditable lies I’d prepared. There went the rest of the wedding dinner service.

So I succumbed to pieces of electronic gadgetry being inserted in my aural orifices and awaited the auditory miracles I had been promised. Alas and alack, they seemed to be tuned to the same frequency as the local FM radio station and I heard more about ‘lerv’ than the glorious sounds of birdlife or my wife’s dulcet tones.

The Grand Inquisitrix was not fooled by my ecstatic claims of the joys of restored contact with the temporal world and that damned audiologist (seemed like such a nice lass originally) adjusted my devices to ‘give you back all the wonderful things you’ve been missing’.

This cornucopia of delights included the agony of our grand-daughter’s primary school choir singing, the avalanche of clichés possessed by football commentators and learning the gruesome details of whatever Third World country was currently at war/starving/suffering an epidemic. To say I was unconvinced that I had been delivered of a serious affliction is like saying that a man with chronic headaches was unconvinced of the need for his decapitation to cure the problem.

So, whenever I thought I could safely do so, I stuffed these harbingers of horror in my pocket and only retrieved them when my wife hove into view. And that worked fine. For a while.

I’d been out in the barn carrying out some repairs, with my ear trumpets in my pocket, when a sudden tap on the shoulder from my wife startled me. She gave strict instructions as to what to do with the horses that had just arrived on a double float. I assured her I would follow her instructions to the letter and that I was clear about what she was saying.

What I was clear about was that she appeared to be entering the early stages of dementia. I mean who in their right mind would want to staple horses together?

A compromise of sorts emerged with the idea of her sending me text messages when it was something important, the theory being that then there would be no room for argument about either party’s deafness or senility.

An admirable plan indeed, were it not for my wife’s propensity to be, shall we say, creative in her spelling. The early warning signs were there when she asked me to buy some naval oranges and I confused the greengrocer no end when I insisted on the ones only sailors eat. And imagine my shock when she said she was going over to her sister’s to help her with her dying.

The plan finally collapsed under the weight of the fiasco of her finding me and the local priest in the barn after she’d told me to exorcise the horses.

So now we just make sure we’re standing close enough to ensure clear communication, although this has led to dancing and who knows where that might end?