Take them in before the dew (or if a hail storm lurks over the horizon) and keep them anywhere free of dust, then put them out next day. If it rains, you can keep them two days inside at a pinch, but after three days of rain you’ll need to dry them in an oven instead. Three days of heat should do it – chewy and rubbery and intensely peach flavoured.
Any peach can be dried, but the juicier they are the more rubbery the result; white peaches shrivel into thin rubber bands. Fat slices of meaty yellow late-season peaches are best – full of subtle rich flavour that caramelises well on drying. The more delicate essences of early peaches are lost in drying. You just get sweetness and an almost artificial taste of peach.
December 16
Chocolate has discovered the new wombat. We heard his howls last night. I adore animal howls: great long shrieks into the night. We dashed out and there was Chocolate bellowing into the hole, his sides puffed like someone had stuck a bellows up his bum and these great ululations echoing down the valley…and tiny whimpers from inside the hole.
I presume from this that the new wombat is a male. We haven’t given him a name. From last night’s performance I doubt we’ll get a chance to.
December 17
No sign of the new wombat.
December 18
The frogs have discovered the fountain. No more lapping water at midnight. All we hear now is riggor riggor riggor unk – always out of sync.
December 20
Bryan’s daughters Liz and Cath came down for a few days before Christmas. We have at least two Christmas dinners, one on Christmas Day and one for family who’ll be Christmasing elsewhere, so I made Peach Crumble.
Peach Crumble is what you make when you’ve been cooking for three weeks – all the social necessities of Braidwood pre-Christmas social life, when it’s bring-a-plate parties (adults) or bring-a-plate parties (kids), and everything from art class to ballet has an end-of-year event at which you eat. Peach Crumble is impossible to muck up, no matter how culinarily burnt-out you are.
E ate three helpings; Liz and Cath only two. Liz is the elder, organised and laughing; Cath a bit wide eyed, and sometimes verging unexpectedly into incredible beauty, which I think she is quite unaware of. We played silly table games, sticking labels like President Lincoln or Blinky Bill onto other people’s foreheads so they had to guess who they were supposed to be; which Bryan refused to join, and did the washing-up instead.
Peach Crumble
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter (margarine doesn’t marry well with caramelised peaches)
12 peaches, ripe but firmish, and definitely not bruised a drop of Cointreau or a few cloves
Preheat the oven to 200°C (this is important – if it’s stuck in a cold oven it can turn gluggy).
Rub the first three ingredients together till they look a bit like lumps of breadcrumbs. Peel the peaches and lay the slices in a baking dish with the Cointreau or cloves, sprinkle at once with the crumbs (if you leave it more than 5 minutes the peaches will start to soften and brown).
Bung the dish into the oven and cook till browned on top – about 30 minutes, but this seems to vary according to all sorts of unpredictables, like if the month has an R in it and whether it’s raining, so keep checking.
It smells wonderful. It tastes even better.
Serve with masses of good cream, or an excellent, preferably homemade vanilla ice cream. Any leftovers you can eat for an extremely sinful breakfast.
There is now a distinct wombat track up the edge of the fountain, and a squashed wombat ‘sit’ on top. I wonder if the wombats connect us with the fountain, and are grateful. But I doubt wombats feel gratitude. Wombats are the centre of their universe. You can never make a wombat feel ashamed – as you might make a dog feel ashamed – or embarrassed or grateful either. Say ‘Bad wombat!’ to a wombat and it’ll just wait for its carrot or maybe run from the sound of your anger.
I’ve never known a wombat to learn its name either, or even to understand a single word like ‘Dinner!’. Not that wombats are dumb – no one who has ever lived with wombats thinks they’re stupid – they just don’t think the way we do, so they flunk every ‘intelligence’ test humans give them. But a wombat-created intelligence test – now, that would be different.
December 21
The apricots are ready. Actually they’ve probably been ready for a week, but I’ve been too flat out to scramble up the hill. Not that it matters – the wallabies have been stuffing themselves.
There’s a particular family of wallabies who live on the apricot hill. We call them the apricot-guts clan, because they are. They sit under the trees and cram the fruit into their mouths so the juice runs down their stomachs and looks disgusting. At dusk they hop away, slowly, across the hill, bellies bouncing, and looking slightly seasick.
You couldn’t miss the apricots today – the smell floated in a great wave down the hill, hot fruit and baked soil. The girls gathered the fallen fruit under the trees and E clambered up and threw fruit down (which squashed it, but it doesn’t matter; I’ve saved those ones for jam) and the apricot-guts clan watched us disconsolately as we purloined their Christmas dinner.
There are still six trees full of fruit left for the apricot-guts. Hopefully we can persuade friends to come and pick and eat, as I don’t want to spend two more days picking. And then selling, which takes even more time. (I used to make my living selling fruit and veg, but it’s a hell of a lot easier writing about it.)
The back of the truck is lined with cases to give away as Christmas presents to anyone we pass. I feel a bit like putting up a sign ‘free to a good home’ – even the girls are a bit aghast at the incredible plenitude of fruit.
The new wombat is lurking down the end of the garden among the avocado trees. It hesitated as I approached last night as though to gallop back to its hole, then kept on eating.
Homemade Pest Repellent
(Doesn’t work with wombats.)
This is a good way to transfer the pest-repelling qualities of plants onto your clothes – test first for staining. But be warned, anything on your skin may be absorbed.
1 part lavender oil
1 part eucalyptus oil
1 part methylated spirits
10 parts cider vinegar
If you’ve got your own lavender growing, pick the flowers and fit as many as possible into a bottle, then pour the eucalyptus oil, meths and vinegar over them and leave to steep for a week before using.
If you use your own flowers, the repellent turns a wonderful translucent purple – it makes a wonderful Christmas gift strained and poured into a fresh bottle, with a few new sprigs of lavender inside just for decoration. But be warned – the incredible colour fades on exposure to light, and after a few months the liquid will be clear again.
December 22
Liz and Cath came home giggling after shopping with Bryan in town.
‘How many women kissed you this morning?’ asked Cath in wonder, after he’d happily been bussed by Jenny, Mary, Natalie, Sue, Netta (who demanded sternly when he was coming to the next Historical Association meeting), Kirsty, Virginia…
The girls have now realised why it takes Bryan three hours to get the groceries: even without Christmas embraces you have to talk as well as pile things into your trolley.
Jeremy leapt on them from behind the frozen-fish fridge and interrogated them swiftly; he needs to be swift at this time of year as there are so many visitors to find out about.
The girls found it a novelty to have to be introduced at every shop they went into, and several they didn’t go into as well: to Gordon Shorrock sweeping the footpath outside Muttons (where you can buy anything, though it can take a month or two to find it; Gordon will see you passing and dash out to say he’s got it now); to Rose Wehby outside the draper’s; to the Robbos, two backs in overalls under a bonnet at the NRMA (another fool Canberra motorist with a leaking radiator) though the backs didn’t mov
e from the bonnet as they passed; to Mr NomChong, who you rarely see outside the shop unless he’s unloading a washing machine on the footpath (you can buy anything at NomChong’s too, as long as it’s electrical; for some reason goods from NomChong’s always behave well). And the girls found it hilarious, and unlike anything they’d known before, an hour almost just to walk down the street…
They left this afternoon with cases of peaches, apricots, pots of herbs, jars of apricot and peach jam, bunches of parsley, silverbeet, lavender for Cath’s potpourri, a dozen eggs each, a pot of hand cream (chamomile and lavender scented) and their Christmas presents.
Cheat’s Christmas Pudding
1 cup dried fruit
sliced mango pulp (optional)
chopped fresh apricots (optional)
2 cups sliced fresh cherries
1 cup brandy or rum and/or fresh passionfruit juice with a little grated orange zest
1 litre good vanilla ice cream
1 tablespoon toasted sliced almonds
1 tablespoon toasted ground almonds
finely grated zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon (no white)
On Christmas Eve soak the dried fruit, mango, apricots and cherries in the liquid. (If the dried fruit looks like its spent six months in the Sahara, simmer it for 10 minutes in half a cup of water first.) Put the lot in the fridge to keep it cold.
Before you eat the main course of Christmas dinner take the ice cream out of the freezer. Just before serving mix all the ingredients into the slightly soft ice cream, then serve at once, in chilled bowls so the ice cream doesn’t melt any further before you eat it.
Don’t refreeze or the ice cream may get ice crystals in it. Not to mention interesting bacteria.
December 23
Bryan went down to Noel Wisbey’s shed to get some peaches and nectarines to take to Noël and Geoff’s on Christmas Day (our next lot won’t be ready for about a week).
Noël (not to be confused with Noel Wisbey) used to be my boss during the short and claustrophobic time I spent in the public service, saving up for this place. The valley is Noël’s spiritual home – or one of them – but she and Geoff and Fabia rarely get down here; so the peaches will at least be a scent and a memory.
Bryan left at 3.45 p.m. and was back with the peaches at 5.00 p.m. (the shed is twelve minutes’ drive away).
When Bryan got there Ned and his brother Jack were sitting out the front gazing at the mountains and reminiscing. Ned scrambled down the back of the shed (about a three-acre walk) and hauled back another chair, and Bryan sat there listening to memories – the hail storm in the ’60s that wiped out their orchards but left the Harrisons’ alone.
‘Do you think the Harrisons’ll stick it out?’ asked Bryan.
‘They’ll give it a go again next year,’ says Ned, ‘they’ve got too much tied up in the place to give it up now…’ And it wasn’t just packing shed, machinery and spraying gear he meant either.
Noel protected his crop this year with a wind machine to beat the frost. (Wind machines are like giant fans – they mix the air so the cold layer mixes with the warm and it never gets quite as cold as it might – even two to five degrees is enough to save the crop.)
‘They’re good boys,’ says Jack of his nephews. ‘We taught them all they know, remember?’
Jack and Ned gazed out at the industry their father started and they established, the kilometres of bright peach trees, only slightly drooping in the heat, the heat haze lifting to the mountains filled with the scent of ripe peaches. Then Ned hunted out the very best peaches in the shed for us to take on Christmas Day, and a case of seconds for us, on the house; and Bryan came back, eventually, like a hunter bringing home the Christmas feast.
Around here Santa comes in a white ute, a bit dusty, with a strong smell of sheep (Santa doesn’t shear that afternoon). He’s already been to the Araluen Christmas party. On Christmas Eve he’ll be hovering with the sea mist above the valley. Christmas will be a good day. It always has been, no matter what disasters have danced on either side of it.
Rum and Roses Fruit Cake
There is no spice in this dish – just roses. Christmas cake, after all, used to be a harvest cake, made in times of plenty and eaten in winter. At least the roses in this recipe will be home grown. Avoid using roses from the florist and filled with pesticide, fungicide and preservatives.
This cake tastes nothing like a bought one. (Don’t let anyone kid you that any cake in cardboard tastes like the real thing. Nothing with preservatives really tastes good.)
THE MARINADE
Shove some extremely stinky rose petals into a large jar. Top with 1 cup of rum. Shake once a day. After 3 days decant, and tip the now fragrant rum into yet another jar of petals. Repeat till the liquid smells like a perfume counter should but never does.
THE CAKE
250 grams butter
1 cup brown sugar
5 cups sultanas
1 cup currants
3 dessertspoons coarse-cut marmalade
4 eggs
2 cups plain flour
Preheat the oven to 130°C.
Beat the butter and sugar together till smooth. Add the sultanas, currants, marmalade and half a cup of the marinade. Then cream in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the flour.
Pour into a cake tin lined with 2 layers of greaseproof paper (don’t bother to grease the tin).
Bake for 4 hours 30 minutes, or till the top springs back when you press it lightly with a spoon.
Remove from the oven, then sprinkle with the other half cup of marinade (blokes like this cake).
Wrap the whole lot in a clean tea towel till cool – this will take hours.
This cake can last for up to a year, but probably won’t.
December 24
Christmas has a smell, like all festivals do I suppose; and the smell varies, depending on who you are with and where.
Here Christmas smells of hot grass and burnt roo droppings and algae threads in the creek and the scent of the sea mist lifting. The sea mist always rolls in after hot summer days and drifts back up the gullies with sunrise, and by the time the shrike-thrush is pecking at the window in the first flash of sunlight the mist has evaporated and the heat is closing its fingers over the valley again.
Christmas smells of summer, suntan oil, dead grass, pudding boiling (of course), Pimms with cucumber (the girls had never tasted it before), and chocolate and muscatels.
When I was a child it smelt of roast potatoes in the dripping that my mother re-used from roast to roast till it had a mother’s vintage cooking smell. (The dripping was finally discarded after perhaps twenty years when my mother moved into her flat, and no other scent has matched it.) There was the smell of brown paper too, still over the Christmas wrapping – most of our relatives lived elsewhere and gifts were posted, bundled round the tree still in string and stamps and cut and torn and wrestled with on Christmas morning. (Do organised homes exist where someone gets the scissors before they start opening presents?)
There’ve been dry Christmases here, when the ground was too hot to walk on in bare feet and the wombats huddled in the damp sand of the creek.
Winter is a time of shadows, swallowing colour in deep purple. Christmas is too bright for colour, everything diminished in white light.
Cold Peach and Curry Chicken
This is excellent – a luxury dish – rich enough so all you need with it are fresh bread or hot new potatoes, and a good salad (slightly bitter to counteract the richness), none of which accompaniments take much time to get ready. The chicken dish can be made a day in advance. A good celebration dish when it’s too hot to cook. (If you ate it every day, you’d get gallstones.)
1 teaspoon good curry paste
1 egg yolk
1 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice
4 dried peaches, soaked overnight salt to taste
1 tablespoon finely chopped coriander or garlic chives or parsley (in order of prefe
rence, coriander is the best)
the meat from a cold roast chicken, chopped
Place the curry paste in a deep bowl with the egg yolk. Whip well with a whisk (apparently it is possible to make mayonnaise – which this is – in a blender, but I’ve never managed it). When the mixture is pale, add a dribble of olive oil and whisk 20 times. Add another dribble and whisk another 20 times. Continue at this extremely slow rate till the oil is gone and the mixture is thick and incredibly shiny, the texture of a fresh cowpat after rain.
Add the lemon or lime juice, then whisk again. Now add the squishy peaches and mix till they are spread throughout the sauce. Add salt to taste, then the coriander, and then the chicken.
Don’t keep this for more than 2 days, and keep it well chilled – aerated egg yolks are wonderful breeding grounds for bacteria.
December 25
‘It must be twenty years since I’ve seen peaches like that,’ said Geoff’s mother. ‘They’re perfect peaches.’
Year in the Valley Page 10
