Stewed Plums and Boiled Rice
In New South Wales in 1962, the Education department introduced the New Wyndham Scheme for secondary schools. They changed from the Leaving Certificate, a five year high school course, to the Higher School Certificate, a six year course. What it really meant was that I would have to spend another year at school. Joy, oh joy!
The Education Department also wanted to use some of the old Domestic Science schools more effectively so they introduced language studies to these schools, to ease the burden on the Language Schools, which were mostly the selective public high schools.
My parents were hoping that I would be sent to one of the selective schools, where my brother went, which they were very happy with. However, when the headmaster at my primary school did not select me to go, not because of my marks but because of his bigotry, my parents were furious and wanted to go to the Education Department and complain (it is now called discrimination). I begged them not to make a fuss. I assured them that the school where I was to go was also offering French and Latin and I could do the same subjects that the selective schools offered. Finally they were convinced, though not altogether happy, and let me go.
French was very important in my family. Both my parents could speak French as well as Italian, Arabic, Greek and, of course, English. They wanted their children to speak another one or two languages, at least. I particularly wanted to learn French. As far back as I can remember, whenever there was a “delicate” subject brought up in our house, my parents would always break into French. I could speak Greek but with French under my belt I would finally get to know what they were saying!
When I arrived at my new high school to study French and Latin I found that in first year I also had to study Domestic Science. The first half was Cooking and the second half was Knitting and Sewing. What a bonus -- life skills! I was going to study French and Cooking. However I wasn’t sure how good my French classes would be as my cooking teacher was also going to be teaching me French. It’s a shame they didn’t teach French Cuisine. My parents would have been spared!
How do you please mum and dad? I made a Turkish coffee for my dad and hot chocolate for my mum. I cooked something special for them whenever I could, especially when they were tired. Sometimes I made them Sunday morning breakfast in bed as a surprise (as long as they weren’t really surprised!). I just enjoyed giving them a special treat really.
One of our cooking classes involved learning how to cook stewed plums with boiled rice for breakfast. This was very interesting for me, as I had never had stewed plums with rice together, and certainly not for breakfast. For me it was Nouveau Australian Cuisine. Usually we would have home-made plum jam or just fresh plums. Mum would stew prunes, apples or apricots and rice was usually served with our evening meal or as a pudding. Breakfast for us was toast with a cup of hot chocolate. So this was very exciting for me, a new Australian recipe to take home. At last I could show off some of my new culinary skills and impress my parents and, in the process, make them appreciate my new school more.
The next Sunday I decided to surprise my parents by making them breakfast in bed. I made sure that we had all of the ingredients and I carefully cooked everything as per my cooking class notes. I arranged the plums and rice beautifully on the plates and put them on a lovely tray and proudly took them to my parents.
They looked at the tray, then at each other and immediately started to speak French. This was not a good sign as this was not a French dish. My French wasn’t yet fluent but I did pick up the words ‘ecole’ and ‘terrible’!!
Mum said politely that she didn’t like sweet and sour together. I’m not sure which she meant was the sweet and which was the sour. Dad, to give him his due, ate it and thought hard about how to comment. He made a funny face but did not spit it out or make any disparaging comments. When he had finished he followed me into the kitchen and gently, trying not to crush my enthusiasm, made some very constructive remarks. “It could do with a little more sugar … perhaps some whole cloves and cinnamon sticks in the syrup, just to give it some extra flavour … and perhaps add some brandy and orange juice as well as water.” But he still couldn’t come at the boiled rice with it.
Not a resounding success, but it didn’t discourage me from cooking again. It was such a good learning process and allowed me to see that any sort of dish, no matter how plain, could be transformed into something more interesting and tasty with a bit of imagination.
My family loved food. Well-cooked, flavoursome food. It was something I didn’t really appreciate when I was young as it was always taken for granted. Simply a part of life.
Our cooking lessons continued for the rest of the term as we ploughed our way through the Common Sense Cookery Book. We were taught how to cook scrambled eggs with parsley on toast and, funnily enough, that is still one of my favourite breakfasts -- especially when you add a creamy whiskey, smoked salmon sauce to the scrambled eggs. And we had a class on those little butterfly cakes – I was intrigued to learn how to make the butterfly wings and … well, I can’t remember the rest!
But I did manage to get an ‘A’ in French and finally broke the code of my Mum and Dad’s secret conversations. So, stewed plums and rice aside, the ‘ecole’ was not so ‘terrible’ after all.
