The Dirty Chef

by Matthew Evans

  In so many ways, my life doesn’t resemble the one I left in Sydney. Sure, with a toddler I’m unlikely to have had the same social- or nightlife that I once enjoyed in the city, even if I’d not left town. But pretty much every facet of my new existence, bar sitting at my desk writing about tucker, has changed.

  I start the day slower, and possibly earlier. I don’t get up and go on a brisk hour-long walk before breakfast anymore. I save that energy for the farm, where I get to lug buckets of feed and move fences for the cows. We tend to live a quieter existence, consuming a lot less that’s come from outside our narrow field of view, and working a lot more, in many respects.

  The work has no boundaries. If an animal is sick or has got out or is giving birth, we stay up late or get up early. If it’s a birthday, we still have to feed pigs, milk a cow, water the garden. Our farm is still run with no machinery bar a pump, with nobody on hand except Sadie and me and occasionally a trusted and hard-working farm hand, Phil. We’re not some corporation or part of some larger business. We’re just a couple of people, giving things a crack. Though with all the projects and all the plans I have in mind, we may have to get more help quite soon.

  I actually do employ a full-time staff member, Sheona, who does an incredible job managing the shop that Nick and I own in Hobart. A folly, perhaps, the shop is full of the kind of food Nick and I love to eat. It’s a self-indulgence, really, and while it does buy virtually all the ham and bacon that originates on Fat Pig Farm, after two years it has yet to repay Nick’s and my modest investment.

  Our big farm, obviously, is where I’d like to focus next.

  We’re currently talking to council about plans for a farm shop. For a commercial kitchen, and for a modest dining room that would be open to the public on occasion. We’re building our herd of dairy cattle, most recently with the arrival of Elsie the Guernsey and Alice the Dairy Shorthorn, and hope one day to have a very small (three-cow) licensed dairy on the farm.

  But these are big plans, with big timeframes and, as usual, unexpectedly big costs. And nothing—not the approvals, the funding or the final dream—is anything like guaranteed. But dream I have done, to get me here in the first place, and dream I must.

  What I’m really interested in on a day-to-day level, from my— as usual—greedy standpoint, is what we can produce from our land.

  One thing we have been quite successful in growing is garlic. When I lived in Sydney, I must admit I didn’t understand garlic. I didn’t understand the stale, sulphurous odour of old garlic. And I didn’t eat one-tenth of the garlic I eat now. Probably because I usually only had access to the crap stuff.

  Blame it on the fact I often work alone. Blame it on the fat, crisp-as-an-apple cloves of purple garlic we could buy locally, even before I grew my own stash. Or blame it on the fact that garlic is supposed to ward off the cold. But I eat lashings of the stuff now.

  I’ll throw in a whole bulb with a chunk of beef or a shoulder of lamb before putting it in the cooker overnight. I’ll roast unpeeled cloves, hidden in our ‘crashed’ potatoes, those half-cooked, crushed spuds anointed with a drizzle of oil before being put in a searing hot oven. We fry garlic to light brown in pig fat before adding wilted kale, or beetroot tops, or Brussels sprouts. In short, we eat a lot of garlic.

  It’s things like this that show how our life has changed. Sure, there’s the geographical difference, but the major changes in life have been the plethora of small changes. I’ve changed the way I eat, the way I view food, and the way I look at life. All for the better.

  Spaghetti aglio e olio (spaghetti with garlic and olive oil)

  Per serve

  This pasta dish is the simple, always-in-the-cupboard, 10-minute favourite we knock up if we get into the house hungry and in a hurry. Never, ever, ever rinse your pasta after cooking or you’ll lose all the flavour and the starch that helps the sauce to stick. And always reserve a little cooking water as the pasta will absorb some as it’s drained and need a touch more to make it moist to eat.

  1 litre (35 fl oz/4 cups) water

  1 tablespoon salt

  125 g (4½ oz) spaghetti

  1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

  1 large garlic clove, crushed

  ¼ teaspoon or so dried chilli flakes or chopped dried red chilli parmesan cheese, grated, to serve

  Heat the water to boiling in a saucepan, add the salt and stir in the spaghetti gently. You may need to press it down, using some tongs, to get the whole strands into the water in a short time. Moving the pasta around when it first goes in the saucepan is really important, as it helps to avoid any bits sticking.

  While the pasta cooks, gently heat the oil in a frying pan large enough to hold the pasta and fry the garlic and chilli flakes until starting to change colour, but take care they don’t burn.

  Test the spaghetti after about 8 minutes, by taking a tiny piece and biting it. It should have a firm, resilient bite, but not be hard and nutty.

  Once it’s cooked, I like to use tongs to scoop the pasta and some of its water into the garlic chilli pan. Otherwise, you can drain the pasta and reserve a little water, then add to the garlic chilli pan. You may need a hint more olive oil.

  Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese on the table.

  Pudding

  Rain slants and hits the window. Today I saw the most brilliant of rainbows, a bold arc that touched the ground on both sides, with no dull spots. In Tassie you see a lot of rainbows, but this one stopped me in my tracks.

  One June day I was stopped in my tracks on the way to Hobart. Snow had closed Vince’s Saddle, the high point on the Huon Highway, and the snowploughs were busy making it safe. I didn’t have the ute; the four-wheel-drive would’ve been welcome in the resultant ice slurry, so I drove at an amble once the road opened again.

  Winter had hit hard. Snow on lower peaks. Rain, wind, more rain. The paddocks were slush, the farmyard slippery and dangerous. The Huon River was flooding over the highway and some local farms looked like fenced-in ponds. At the time I brought out my book Winter on the Farm, little did I know that much of the frost, snow, mud and puddles pictured from the previous winter would be reality within days.

  I adore winter. The cooker is usually on, the water’s very hot, and the puddings regular. That winter, though, I’d sprained my ankle pretty badly. My foot was scarily deep purple and blue from the sprain more than a fortnight afterwards, and Priscilla still didn’t relish me trying to milk her, showing it with a good kick or two. Thank god for Sadie, is all I can say.

  If you want to live this life, a small-holder’s life with all its commitments, responsibilities and unrelenting chores, it helps to be more than one. You either do it as a family or you need great neighbours, friends and relatives. We have all of those, but most of the relatives are far-flung, the friends are busy with their own lives, and the neighbours have their own properties to manage. Sadie, a city girl who moved here for me, probably didn’t sign up for the endless rounds of work I’ve subjected her to by my physical absences and failures. Though she does seem to relish much of the farm work. She gets obsessed with the vegie garden, is scrupulous about using every leaf and root grown there, and has slowly come around to being a pig farmer.

  For two weeks I was out of action with my sprained ankle, and in that time feeding, milking, mucking out, spreading gravel, parenting, stacking firewood and general chores had to go on. We’re ambitious with what we try to do on our modest little patch of earth, but when all is right, it feels like a doddle. Those couple of weeks, as I’m sure Sadie would attest, were more like hard yakka than a doddle. But no matter how much it might feel like a chore, there is a pay-off.

  Where we live, there’s the joy of distinct seasons. In summer, the grass browns off and the creeks slow to a trickle. With the long days, we often try to get to the beach after doing farm chores. The work, outdoors in all weather, swings from roasting sun to so cold you can feel it in your kidneys. Most of the year, the weather is perfect for
manual labour; the only worry in the middle of winter is that you can lose too much heat when you pause for lunch. All year the light is striking, the views constantly changing as things flourish and lie fallow. I do feel the changes in my soul, no longer a mere spectator who just admires the emerald green fields, or the fruit fat and heavy on the trees, rather someone who has found virtue in knowing about the land.

  I can’t pretend to be a proper farmer. Wasn’t born one, can’t become one, probably, at this late stage in life. But I can enjoy farming, and my association with the land. Sadie and I feel richer for what we have been able to do with our farms. We feel blessed to have had the chance to get closer to the soil, to have dirt under our fingernails, to have witnessed the joys of rearing and husbanding animals. Nothing we do is demeaning, which—sadly I have to say—isn’t true of all farming these days.

  And yes, there are plenty more ideas we’ve yet to put into place. Some ambitious, some just fun.

  One thing I really want on my farm, but don’t have yet, is a scarecrow. For some reason (and I’m not alone—watch a three-year-old’s fascination with them), I adore scarecrows. They remind me of a more innocent time, perhaps. A reminder of a low-tech solution to a pest problem. It’s why a drawing of a scarecrow graces the cover of my book The Real Food Companion. Scarecrows dot the D’Entrecasteaux Channel each year. That region, just over the hills from Cygnet (and where the ferry goes to Bruny Island), is home to the Middleton Country Fair at the end of each summer. The fair has a scarecrow competition, hence the plethora of them in The Channel. Scarecrows on boats, on dams, fishing. Scarecrows on benches. One year there was even a ‘swear crow’ entry. The competition is judged using photos, so the scarecrows stay where they belong—along the highway, entertaining locals and visitors alike. Tassie does a good country show, I’ve found.

  Anyway, I’m not sure if I need a scarecrow, or just want one. It won’t help things grow any better or quicker, I don’t think. Though it might entertain the three-year-old and that’s never a bad thing.

  There are days—many, many days—when all I can see out the windows at home, or on our big farm, is work to be done. Not in a bad way, but with a skip in my heart and a lump in my throat. As we turn an old farm that had a few fallow years into what we hope will be a viable mixed holding, I get a little goosepimply. Will we be able to milk a few cows at the big farm? If so, by hand or machine? A Jersey, a Guernsey, or a Dairy Shorthorn? Or all three? Will we be able to set up a farm shop, or a part-time café, and make it a worthwhile business? Can we transform the old orchard into a productive, attractive and worthwhile heritage apple grove with a little culling and a lot of grafting?

  Then I remember our financial, physical and emotional limitations, none of which are easily surmounted. And I feel a little overwhelmed.

  Is it really that expensive to build a commercial kitchen and dining room? No wonder nobody does it on a farm.

  It’s times like these that the reality of what we’ve already achieved comes down to one thing. The food on our plates. And it’s times like these that I feel reassured. When I eat a piece of fat bacon, from our gloriously flavoured pigs, or toss homegrown broccoli raab (cime di rape in Italian) through pasta, or taste a risotto made with stock from a chicken that lived and died on the farm, I know there’s a difference. The food we have access to has something special about it. We don’t use chemicals in its production. We do produce some serious compost. We do choose seeds from varieties that are known for their flavour, not for their commercial viability. And we do eat food, sometimes, that’s not from our farm, so we have a reference point. And our tucker does have something ‘other’ about it.

  The good news is that this specialness is available to anybody who cares to take the time to grow things. Start with parsley, a bay tree in a pot. Thyme, coriander, any herb you can sustain where you live. Once you’ve eaten your own herbs—cut a mere seconds before you need them—and compared them to the impostors available on supermarket shelves, you’ll know the difference. Scale this up to carrots from your yard, apricots from your own tree, eggs from your girls in the chook house or, if you’re lucky enough to have the space, pigs from your own small-holding, and there’s no looking back. Real food, grown and nurtured with care from the soil up, has more inherent flavour. Yes, there’s the feel-good factor of having grown things yourself. Yes, you will use your sense of resolve to believe your produce tastes better, but the truth is, it actually does. The thing is, and I say this as much out of astonishment as out of any kind of expertise, if a novice like me can grow and rear things with more taste, more depth, more of the ingredient’s flavour in it, simply by giving it a crack, then anybody can.

  My sourdough still isn’t perfect, because perfect sourdough is a journey, not a destination. My garlic last year wasn’t as good as the year before. The tomatillos didn’t really ripen for some reason this last summer. And slugs, my god, slugs are my new enemy number one. But most things, most of the time, meet and surpass our expectations. There have always been people out there who have grown their own food and to them this is no surprise. To them, I sound like a born-again gardener, trying to convert those who have already discovered the simple joy of sage from their balcony or spuds from their plot. But it gives the work I do on the farm more meaning when I can taste the difference in the eating. And all I hope is for others to discover the same.

  Finding your favourite moment, your favourite piece of this multifaceted lifestyle, is like trying to say you have a favourite child. So many things I do since I moved to the land are a pleasure, it’s hard to cite just one.

  But I’d have to say the most rewarding feeling is the support from locals. The dairy farmers, who have offered their help with our milking cows; Marcus, who offers advice on the planting of trees and the benefit of swales; and the other Marcus, who helps with shifting livestock and is trying to reduce my feed costs; Andrew, who helped set up my in-paddock worm farms; Tony, who grafted our ancient orchard; Pep, who has been emergency siphon-fixer and smoke-house builder. All manner of neighbours who lock up the chooks when we’re late getting home, or who bring bags of surplus vegies to the door, or show up when there’s some serious slashing to be done. People sharing knowledge at barbecues or the local ‘Gentlemen’s Club’, who know so much more than I’ll ever know about when to plant the broccoli, why the lemon’s leaves are yellowing, and just what kind of chickens will lay right up until the shortest day. And those who have no hesitation in getting their hands dirty when there’s lifting to be done or sick animals to care for.

  It’s been a strange experience, recording my farmhouse dream in writing instead of on the telly. It has given me great cause to reflect. Would I do things differently? You bet! Would I spend more time researching before starting many of my projects? Yes, but not so much that I’d be afraid to get out among it. Would I have moved to the farm when I was younger? Most certainly. But I’m just so, so, so grateful that I had the opportunity to do it at all.

  Yes, if you’re wondering, Fat Pig Farm does still cost us more to run than it earns. But that will slowly change as we convert it to our uses. Yes, as relative newcomers we do waste time and effort on things that probably don’t matter, or that are doomed to fail anyway. Yet the only way to learn is to give things a go, whether you’re met by triumph or disaster. I’m glad we’re not sitting on our hands wondering. I’m proud of what we have achieved, and philosophical about what we’ve botched. The only people who don’t make mistakes are those who don’t do anything.

  Sometimes I think I do too many things, have too many plans, start too many projects. But this glorious life goes by so quickly that you just have to give it a red-hot go. I spent many years in jobs that aren’t nearly so satisfying as working the land, and I don’t want to miss out on anything now.

  We have great plans for what we want to do with our corner of Tasmania. Great to us, but really quite small in the scheme of what can be achieved by all the others who share the same philosophy. />
  I’d like to grow and cook and share our land with our friends, our family, our neighbours. And even open our farm one day to those who are just starting on a journey to grow their own food. There’s a lot to do to make our land better, a lot of things I’d still like to build up and try on our small patch of Tasmanian paradise.

  So long as the body and mind hold up, I’m more than just a little excited about the future.

  Steamed treacle pudding

  Serves 6–8

  Sometimes old cookery books have more than just recipes, such as a ‘sure cure for quinsy’. Whatever that is. This is my version of a very old favourite.

  60 g (2¼ oz) butter, softened

  200 g (7 oz/just under 1 cup) caster (superfine) sugar

  1 egg

  135 g (4¾ oz/just under 1 cup) self-raising flour

  250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) milk

  2 tablespoons treacle (molasses)

  2 tablespoons golden syrup (light treacle)

  jersey cream, to serve

  Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until pale. Beat in the egg, then add half the flour and half the milk in two batches.

  Grease and flour a pudding basin (mould) and pour the treacle and golden syrup into the bottom. Tip in the pudding batter and seal the lid. (If you don’t have a pudding basin, use a heatproof bowl and cover the top with plastic wrap and then foil, then tie kitchen string tightly around the rim to seal, making a handle from the string, too.)

  Place the pudding in a large saucepan and put in hot water to come one-third of the way up the side of the basin. Bring to a simmer, cover with a tight-fitting lid and steam for about 2 hours, checking occasionally that there’s enough water in the pan.