Sometimes you just have to accept what life throws at you.

It is late afternoon and I am sitting up in bed nursing my first episode of travelers’ belly! It is a week before Christmas and if, a few months ago someone had told me I would be spending this Christmas in Pakistan I would have been the first one to laugh and say ‘don’t be ridiculous’.

However, here I am.

My life in Kenya is over. A very sudden and traumatic end to a life I thought would continue until literally my dying days. Saying goodbye to family, friends, the people and the places that have been part of my daily life for so long was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

Why you ask? Enough to say, I guess we never really know someone as well as we think we do.

BUT, with the love and support of the amazing Pasta Mamas (who you will familiar with from previous post), wonderful friends in both Kenya and Australia and of course my amazing and ever supportive family, I have passed through the worst of it.

Most of my worldly goods are on the high seas somewhere between Mombassa and Sydney. Not that they even have a home to go to when they arrive. I will sort out that problem when it comes.

When I was offered a job in Pakistan, 2 weeks after arriving in Australia, I jumped at the chance – great job, beautiful country and it delays the inevitable – having to find a house and a job in Australia.

As my friend Becs said when she heard I had accepted my new job ‘I knew you would be doing something amazing before too long’.

The thing is, I no longer have an African Kitchen Table in fact I don’t even have a Pakistani kitchen table! What I do already have though is a note book full of jottings, frantically recorded and ready to be expanded into posts – bustling cities, stunning country side, outrageously decorated lorries, beautiful fashions, delicious food and incredibly welcoming and hospitable people.

Fate has handed me this opportunity. I am not sure it is quite what the friends who said ‘everything happens for a reason’ had in mind but right now I am grabbing it with both hands. I am one month into my stay here and my senses are already saturated with the experience. Who knows what will happen tomorrow.  

Just in case you are worried that I am lonely, here is proof that I did not come alone. Sitting on my bedhead is the little soap stone rhino given to me by my next door neighbour, Nadia, just before I left Kenya. She hoped it would always be a reminder of the rhinos who came to visit us in shared  our  'front garden' Nairobi National Park

The Arrival

I am final here.

After 4 weeks of anticipation I am stepping off the plane in a country that is to be home for the next 12 months. It is 2am and the autumn chill is very present as, with my fellow passengers, I make my way by bus, from the plane to the main terminal. As promised, there is someone waiting at the arrival gate, holding up a paper with my name. He guides me effortlessly though immigration and customs – probably the smoothest arrival I have ever had in all my years of traveling. Of course there is the usual wait for the baggage to be unloaded but finally it comes through the flap. The conveyer belt has seen better days, but it does the job and with relief that they are all still intact, I retrieve my 3 bags.

Contrary to what I have been told, my ‘Mr Fixit’ does assist with pushing heavily laden luggage trolleys!

Emerging from the arrivals hall into the crowd waiting to greet family and friends the contrast could not be greater. My fellow passengers are mostly decked out in jeans and leather jackets (except for the few ladies who prefer the comfort of traditional dress). I have to stop for a couple of seconds to take in the scene before me, it is now when I realise that I really am here in Pakistan. As at arrival gates around the world the crowd is 5 of 6 deep. Men young and old dressed in their traditional shalwar kameez, traditional Pashtun hats and well wrapped up against the cold in their beautiful embroidered Kashmiri shawls.

Moustaches! Everywhere I look there are amazing moustaches. I am guessing they do not shave them off at the end of Movember!

 

Whoops! I am hurried along to the waiting driver, who piles the luggage into the pickup and we are off in to the Islamabad night. Not a lot to see in the dark unfortunately but to be honest all I really want is to get to the house.

As much as I want to fall into bed, I always need to take time to explore my surroundings. Even if it is only my allocated room. I change out of my traveling clothes and ‘claim my space’ by unpacking my belongings into cupboards and shelves. The room itself passes muster – the bed is comfortably firm and the shower gushes boiling hot water within a seconds of turning on the tap.

 I wake to the midday call to prayer. I am not sure what time I finally fell asleep and even now I could probably sleep through the day but I make the effort to get up realizing that I need to get into a normal routine as soon as possible. With coffee in hand, I find my way up to the rooftop terrace. It is a beautiful autumn day, clear and crisp with the sun shining and making a gallant effort to warm the air. Our street is quiet, lined with trees. Our house is at the end of the cul-de-sac and across a waste area I can hear boys playing cricket – yes, I am definitely in Pakistan! The Margalla hills surround the town, appearing to rise up directly from the houses on the opposite side of the street. They are barren and brown and unfortunately will not be covered in snow during the winter although they will provide some much needed exercise.

Down on our very small patch of lawn, the watchman looks up and waves as the peace is suddenly shattered by 10 generators along the street springing to life as the town power goes down for a couple of hours. Oh well, not everything can be perfect.    

The Farmers Market - the start of my commercial ventures for real!!

February has been a weird month! After deciding on a whim to return to my old job and getting a position which would mean being away from home for 3 months (I don’t think the veggie garden or me would last much longer than this) I had 10 days to prepare for the departure. I did delay the departure date to suit several events that I was very much looking forward to which both took place on the Saturday before I was due to depart.

But I do get ahead of myself a bit – late in January we learned that our neighbours had been working hard to relocate a swarm of bees from their newly built hanger (yes, we are not the only ones with flying machines in our back garden) to strategically placed bee hives. Unfortunately the bees decided that they quite liked building new homes in aviation facilities and took up in one of the wings hanging in our shed! It took Bosco and Bernard a few days to realise that this is where all the bees suddenly in the back garden where coming from and by this time it was a little beyond their capabilities even with the protection of the bees suit. So what do you do when you need to move bees? You call Sam the Bee Man! In preparation Jim had spent the weekend making a new hive and we set up a stand under the Kei apple tree. Sam came out the next afternoon and it was late and dark by the time he departed. The moving of the bees was done with out much injury to those involved but I did end up with a few refugees in the kitchen, who unfortunately did not make it through the night. Sam also checked out our hive down by the river and we were rewarded with a small harvest of very dry comb and some very mature honey which was delicious. Eating fruit or vegetables grown in your own garden is a wonderful feeling but eating honey that has been produced by bees in your own garden is even more so (even if we have less involvement in its actual production, somehow it is a real sense of achievement). It took a few days for the bees to settle into their new home (and they did return to the wing a few times). Hopefully by the time I return home in May they will be happily producing litres of delicious golden nectar.

I am very keen to add our own honey to the menu of my farmers market produce!

Which brings us to my newest venture. Our ‘local’ that hosted the very successful Christmas Market has decided to hold a farmers market once a month. It is the perfect outlet for my culinary urges and the overflow from the garden. Since being invited to be involved mid-January, I had been frantically chopping aubergines and mangoes to produce as much chutney as possible. I was under a lot of pressure since my friend Fiona has been singing the praises of my aubergine chutney on facebook! Despite the rainy threatening, Saturday morning dawned with me packing 60 jars of various preserves, tables, chairs, and all the paraphernalia needed for a market, into the pickup.

My experiment was the cheese I made out of 4 litres of my cousins beautiful, pure jersey milk. It is similar to the Lebanese cheese Labne (see the photos). Anyway, it is an experiment no longer, it completely sold out (selling at 300/= for 100 grams) and will be on the menu for the future. Actually the whole stall was a sell out and I am thinking that I am going to have to be spending much more time in the kitchen to keep up with the demand and also to expand the menu. However, it does of course depend what is available in the garden and in the organic market. Preserves and chutneys have traditionally been produced at the height of the season when there is a glut of produce in order to have summers wonderful produce available through out the year and I don’t see any point in using second rate, expensive, imported ingredients just to be able to have stock on the table, it sort of removes the sense of achievement and also the pride in being able to say to customers that I know the complete process of production is organic and home made every step of the way.

I am now in Turkey and of course having a wonderful time exploring markets and experimenting with local ingredients and my small (hopefully expanding) knowledge of Middle Eastern recipes, but that will have to wait for the next post (with photos of course)!    

your choice of mango, aubergine or green tomato chutney - it all depends on your level of heat tolerance! 

sundried tomatoes - and they really were dried in the sun on our front terrace

the limited cheese production - 

this, of course was not taken at the market but at the Australian Ball on the Saturday evening - my last night of wild Nairobi night life for 3 months with Jim, Will (who I will truely miss sharing an office with) and my dear friend Helen. And if you are wondering what Jim is up to whilst I am away, one word - planes - he is away from home for much of the same time, flying to his hearts content. 

Australian Cooks

Recently a South African friend asked me a question which really made me think. We were sitting on the front terrace enjoying the evening parade of animals on the ridge, my friend was flipping through my copy of Maggie Beer’s ‘Maggie’s Table’ when she looked up and asked ‘Why is it that all Australians can cook?’

Can we? Are we any better as a nation than any other who have an eclectic population contributing to their culinary experiences?

What made the question even more intriguing was that it came from someone who has a reputation as a cook and a son who is a professional chef.

 My initial answer was ‘because we have to be’. Not because we don’t have fantastic restaurants but simply because, from my experience Australians eat and entertain at home a lot more than I have found in other countries. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that unless you live in a city it is a long drive to the nearest restaurant (and there is so much of Australia that is not cities than I think most people realise). Maybe it has something to do with the social, caring, sharing aspect of eating together. I have several friends who would say they can’t cook, but put them in a kitchen and they may not be Michel Roux, but the results are better than average.    

Even as students in the 1980’s, we probably entertained at home, cooking for friends, more often than we ate out, although, my house mates and I did go through a stage of choosing an up-market restaurant about once a month and really treating ourselves.

When visiting friends living on a cattle station we had guests driving over 100kms for a dinner party invitation – you can’t take the kids or stay the night at a restaurant in town! 

 With some time to think I would also answer ‘How can we not be’.

Not only do we have access to amazing produce, we also have had available for many years, a wide range of authentic international, especially SE Asian, ingredients which of course makes it so much easier and more exciting to reproduce your restaurant favourites at home.  

I also think this skill has crept up on Australia quietly. The farmers markets and such like are, relatively speaking, a new development. We have also had some wonderful teachers and guides. I think the foundation stone was laid back in the 60’s and 70’s – much the same time as culinary developments were happening in Britain. Of course Australia drew the trump card with the Australian Women’s Weekly and the cookbooks that followed. Is there a kitchen in the world without at least one volume? You may challenge this, however, they are on sale even here in Kenya.

The other secret, linked to AWW, is Margaret Fulton. MF was the cooking editor of AWW for many years. Again, I am sure there is not a kitchen in Australia without ‘The Margaret Fulton Cookbook’. I am waiting to inherit my mother’s copy, the newer editions are just not the same. I have many of the recipes written out on scraps of paper and when I am home I love looking through it, the photographs glowing with retro brown and orange kitchen wallpaper and Pyrex dishes. The ‘exotic’ foreign dishes in the Entertaining section which, today, we take so much for granted.  

The magazine industry also gave us a helping hand at becoming competent cooks. Since the age of 15 when I used to baby sit and spent the evenings reading through volumes of Australian Vogue Entertaining (there was no travel section in those days). The difference between this and other food magazines available at the time was that it featured housewives showing what they cooked for their family and friends every day. I remember being very disappointed in the magazines available when I moved to London. There were professional food magazines which were very high brow, but nothing like AVE. I went through my collection several years ago when space was becoming an issue and as a compensation for having to put the magazines in the recycling (after copying out essential recipes, of course) I kept all the covers and am waiting for my new kitchen where I will have a AVE frieze rather than wall paper. I guess the 21^st Century equivalent is the television cook and I love watching whatever BBC Living has to dish up most evenings, but it is not the same; you can’t scribble in the margins, read in the bath or bed or in an airplane, or just flip through a few pages when deciding what to cook for dinner. Unless you sit in front of the tele with a paper and pen at hand it is not so easy to reproduce the dishes.

Of course there have been wonderful cooks since Margaret Fulton such as Maggie Beer and Donna Hay. Maybe, that is the secret; the Australian food revolution has featured cooks rather than professional chefs. We don’t see them as threatening, they are just wives and mothers, feeding their families everyday like the rest of us. Oh, and the men of course -  who could forget Bernard King!! 

Although I must pay homage to one of the great Australian chefs, Stephanie Alexander, who, since closing her restaurant, has taken on the mission of teaching Australian children about growing food and cooking through her Kitchen Garden Foundation where school are supported to set up kitchen gardens and the kids get to do all the hard work and learn to cook what they grow. I have been to visit a couple of these projects and they are amazing. One of the schools in Darwin even had cows. The kids are so proud of what they are doing and, even if they don’t all take on careers as chefs at least we can be assured they won’t be taking their kids to McDonald’s too often!!

But you know, having said all that, I think the real answer might simply be ‘because we want to be’. Because we love really good food, and most of the time we have great weather which is more conducive to enjoying being in our own backyard or packing a picnic, with friends rather than sitting in traffic to get to a restaurant. There is also pride in cooking for friends and family, and from the receivers’ side, knowing that someone cares enough to spend time producing a wonderful meal with you in mind.

So, all you Kenyan friends, next time you are invited out to the house for lunch or dinner, the answer you should give is not ‘oh you don’t need to go to so much effort, let all go out’ rather ‘thank you, what a privilege to be invited’ and come knowing it is a labour of love just for you!!

Most importantly, in Australia (and Kenya is fast catching up), we have really strict drink driving laws and who ever heard of having a really good feed with great friends that does not involve a few beers or a couple of bottles of good wine J even getting a taxi is sometimes just too much effort. It is so much easier to find a space on the couch or crash in the spare room. Anyway, if you stay the night you get breakfast as well!  

 

2014 Year of the Cake! and visitors from Australia - hurrah

Happy New Year to everyone! After much deliberation and many invitations Jim and I ended up having a very restful 10 days at home over Christmas and New Year.

I had a hot, humid and hectic dash to the north coast to deliver the wedding cake for a friend getting married in Watamu. I did all the baking ahead of time in the cool of Nairobi and packaged the tiers up in insulated cool boxes to transport them. Everything arrived in good order; cakes intact, equipment undamaged and fondant icing soft but solid! Now I have cooked in some pretty hot locations but putting together a wedding cake with butter cream and fondant in the December tropical heat nearly broke me! Everything was going well until I had to refrigerate layers in between putting them together – too hot outside the fridge and way too wet inside.  My wonderful friend Laurence and her son Simon, who were holidaying in Watamu drove up to Malindi to talk me through the final construction and decoration. They are still laughing at the fact that all I could utter was ‘it’s sweating, it wont stop sweating!’ But we got there in the end and the drive to Watamu was uneventful. It was a relief to had the sandcastle over to the responsibility of the lovely staff at Hemmingway’s who assured me they would look after it and I was finally able to relax with fish and chips and a G&T at Ocean Sports.





 

A couple of very exciting projects have resulted from this cake so it was worth all the worry.

Arriving home on the evening of 22^nd I still had to get dozens of mince pies delivered. I had several orders from the coast which I had intended to make down there but after trying to roll pastry 3 times I gave up! Anyway it was quite relaxing to do them with Christmas carols in the background and Air Kenya got them to their destination unharmed.

 

This is what 100 iced Christmas Tree biscuits looks like when laid out on your dining room table!

 Mince Pies waiting for their icing sugar 'snow'

Jim and I had all good intentions of going to midnight mass but in the end exhaustion prevailed but we did attend the carol singing at Talisman restaurant and had a lovely time with friends and mulled wine.

Christmas Day was actually relaxing. Lots of delicious food of course -  ham, duck, and pudding – but not too over indulgent and we both, surprisingly lost a few grams. I am not sure how but the scales don’t lie!

Our house all lit up for Christmas and Jim's present in its new home above the mantelshelf - a beautiful Kudu drawing by our good friend Beaver Shaw.

 

Car trouble saw us remaining at home for New Year. Our good friends Dave and Pam joined us for dinner on the terrace – mushroom tartlets, fillet mignon and my grandmother's ‘orange mist pudding’, a wonderful concoction of cream and orange juice. Maybe due to the champagne consumed (or just the fact that we are all getting older) after a very late breakfast I was straight back to sleep and found it quite difficult to do any sensible for the rest of the day.

 

So what does 2014 hold for the African Kitchen Table? Well, I have opened a new face book page – Akt baking – for those of you who are on facebook, please friend us. I will be putting up photos of all things cake and if you are in Kenya you can order directly through the page. As the experiment with sending the mince pies was a success I am happy to take orders from around the country. I will put up special events such as Valentines and Easter as well. I am already onto the next birthday cake and have several orders in the pipeline so hopefully the year will be a delicious and profitable one.

The garden is thriving after the late rains but the baboons are also enjoying the rewards of our labours bur that is a story for another day. In preparation for the arrival of friends and family later in the year I am having fun making new curtains and other interior decoration for our guest rooms. With the help of Bosco and Bernard we are revitalising the cactus rock garden area just outside the buffalo fence. This also includes clearing some of the undergrowth to make it safer for small people to play (Bosco and I found a lovely hidey hole where we could watch the birds go about their business, such a differenct view from feeding them on the terrace) and also make a definate path down to the lawn area by the river hopefully to encourage us and visitors to use this lovely space more frequently. I am also determined to get my goose /duck pond with occupants this year. 

 

 

  the planned pond site

 

I hope it is a great year for all of you, where ever you are and I hope you continue to enjoy reading  the Jottings.