The ChrissieCast: Foodie Karen Martini

Oh hi, Welcome to the Christy Cast live from the Compound. Now let's see what this saucy little wheel has in store for us today. Oh yum. Yes, it has landed on the foodies, one of my very clear interest areas. And how thrilling this is because we have one of Australia's greatest foodies of all time and she's been perfectly slow cooked at one hundred and twenty degrees for seven hours.

What an inturn thank you.

I'm so thrilled to meet you. We have so much to discuss. Let's spin the wheel again and see what we're going to talk about first. Oh, it's child's play. Fantastic here is a photograph of you as a kid. Cute by the way, thank you, and still cute. Who was this person and how is she the same as you or different to you? Now?

Well the picture might look cute ha ha. At fifteen, I was definitely pushing the boundaries and a bit of a bit of a rebel, I suppose, but not necessarily wagging school but always late. But I didn't necessarily not like school, love school. But I decided to leave early because I found my passion what I thought was my passion, and believe it or not, it became my passion cooking.

That is extraordinary to me.

It is extraordinary because how do you do that at such a young age. How I've got two teen daughters now and there is no way on earth they'll be leaving school at fifteen sixteen or even remotely even thinking about it.

So it shows such agency and ownership of your life.

I was my parents would probably say stubborn, but I was driven, focused. I was in love with the idea that that cooking could actually be an amazing career. Back then it was a gourmet chef, which makes my skin crawl.

In the words.

But back then that was you know that was the thing. You did an apprenticeship and you learned to cook, and by all means, boy did I do that? And I must say though my parents, So I did leave at the end of your ten. My parents re enrolled me.

And we both have children at that exact point. Leo has just finished year ten, Your youngest has just finished year ten. Do you look at her and go no?

Way? What?

Yeah?

I do? And I think Amber has mentioned to me so because stellar and I've just worked out that really I left school at that age and I have done so much since. But how could you? Mum?

What were you thinking? And what were your parents thinking? They did they raise you? Did they raise you with that kind of open mind? And you are your own person, obviously you can make your own decisions and we trust you.

I was eldest of three daughters. I was very independent, very focused, and I just said it in my head that I was going to start an apprenticeship. Did you have to sell it to them? Yes, but you know what, they believed it to a certain extent. Encourage me, indulge me if you like. But they re enrolled me in your eleven, thinking she'll get sick of this working thing. They paid the fees like I was going back into school as far as they was concerned. Silently, they didn't

You have not you So let's go back to You're fifteen, you finished year ten. You've said, yeah, where I want to go? I want to start now. I want to get cracking and I'm going to get an apprenticeship. Where did you start? And what did that look like?

Well, the reality of that was I did a work experience in a three hat restaurant called Meeta's with Melbourne's finest import, Jacques Raymond, and I wanted an apprenticeship from Mieta O'Donnell then bless her soul, yes, influencing the Melbourne hospitality scene.

Did you?

And she said go back to school, little girl. You are not getting an apprenticeship here, and I went promptly, well, I will get an apprenticeship somewhere else. Anyway. I got an apprenticeship at the Austin Hospital.

It's a little bit.

Of a step down from a three hat, you know, symphony of delicious food cooked at a very high French level. I'm talking Austin Hospital. Back then, in the late.

Eighties, you would have got good at jelly.

I got good at pealing eggs. I got good at reading patients recipe cards on a convey about doing mash or pea. Look, it wasn't it wasn't fancy and it wasn't romantic, but I had my eye on the prize. Went to Miriam Anglis Trade School. I did three years of apprenticeship or the proper four year apprenticeship, but did manage to tick tack my way into a two hat restaurant, three hat restaurant, Tansy's in Carlton, which was an amazing restaurant.

Which do you te all this up yourself?

Like?

Including the chats with Meeta and Yep.

I got interviews.

I for front Byer.

I wrote letters, no emails back then I had to deliver and present. I was more front than Mayer's. I think my mother actually used that, yes, but you know what she said to me, You know what the world is your oyster. You go out and find it girl, if you think you can. So that's off to my parents for that encouragement. But you know what they always said, you can go back like it's no problem if you if you have to do a U turn no.

Problem, go live see if you can.

And I did work, you know, I was seventeen, working fifty to sixty hour weeks, but I was hungry for the knowledge of cookery.

What did you learn in the first years of your restaurant apprenticeship.

We used to get hairs, like whole hair in. That's a big wild rabbit.

It's a big rabbit, hira.

We got eels in, we got pheasants in.

They would arrive furry and dead.

Yes, we'd be plucking and skinning and boning and hanging and it was a pretty gruesome sort of to talk about it like that. But that was a skill set that you just don't learn anywhere else but a three restaurant using product.

And you probably don't learn it now, like.

If No, it's a very hard thing to get that experience these days because things arrive cleaned, plant plucked, thank god. Plucking is not much fun. Just imagine there's.

It sounds like something from the MIDI from the Middle Ages.

Really, I was just on a you know, a lemonex and stainless steel bench out the back in a little restaurant in Carlton, dealing with all of those things with a prep list as long as your arm. Boxes and boxes of broadbeans to pot and artichokes to pull. And yabbis were my favorite because they used to come in live and we had to disembel them live and then cook them. Do you still we play yabbies? Yeah, that's still the method of cooking. Abby Yabby's a delicious sweet.

Tastes like mud, mud, it's like mud.

That's a fair call. I suppose they're like a sweet prawn with an undertone of earthiness. Wouldly the way I describe it.

Were there any moments in those teen years when you were doing what no other teenager was doing that you went, I know, if I've done the right thing here? Like, what were your friends? Like?

My friends were still at school? But I guess who had the money?

Yeah? I mean even an apprenticeship, which is famous for not having any money, is more than a Saturday shifted delight.

Yeah, because delight. By the way, my first other job was at missus Field's Cookies, and I got the sack from eating the cookies. Anyway, that what was your favorite?

My favorite chip?

Something with peanuts.

It was a semi sweet that was my favorite.

Oh but that was my first job ever. But that was when I was pretty young, fourteen or something.

Did a big shopping center Chatty Greensboro, Greensborough Greensworth Plaza. Yes, yes, with the sea through lifts. It went up, Yes, my god, so fancy. Yeah.

So I had some cash and we'd be doing a fair bit of clubbing back then, maybe a little bit underage by seventeen eighteen and hanging out. And then I'd go first because I have to be at work in the morning, so it's sort of it needed a certain level of discipline to be focused on your day's work, which could be boning hairs and making terraenes and ice cream and puff pastry and banacotta's and all those sorts of thing.

And how long did this last? This fifty to sixty hours a week?

Um, I'd say, Christy, the best part of twenty three years of my life or more. And like sixty hours was a standard week. You do twelve hour days, so I know it's a different life.

It takes a certain person.

Does It takes a certain mindset and a certain person and you're relatively tough. You know, it's a hot, twenty sharp, enclosed environment. But the thrill of service and the possibility of all this raw produce being turned into something magnificent on the plate. Not only looking magnificent, but the flavors. Half the flavor it was I was desperate for and

What was food like in your house in the first fifteen years. Well, let's just.

Say I'm very familiar with you know, the sound of burnt toasts being scraped in the morning.

I love burnt toasts. I got used to it.

But toast needs to be cooked, Like you don't want to fuck an undercooked.

No, like say whatever you want, camera, I don't mind it burnt. And I find the burnt bits and I put butter on those.

Because that's a charminess that it's flavor, burnt bits of flavor. Yeah, this was like I've got a glazed ham coming soon. It's like, don't ever undercook your baked ham. It needs to almost be going dark and crispy, burnt, burnt on the edges, to be.

Done almost supontified, which is a word I used, which I learned last week. It's kind of deconstructed to the point of soap. I like my lamb shoulders to be almost.

Si yes, yes, that would be beef cheeks falling off the bone. Yeah. No, it's a it's a funny process. I suppose if you go back through my childhood, food schnitzels, pepperonata, burnt chops, three quarter chops off the barbie, coleslaw, heavily dressed, lots of praise, pecorino cheese and fennel and green olives woven in there. I was a kid that had the lunch box that's stunk. I had, you know, the salami and handcut sandwiches, vienna loaf fat now yeah.

Back then, no friends, No, you just wanted vegimie.

Yeah, vegimi. I didn't have a hanker for jam or hundreds and thousands. That was too sweet for me. Always it's been a savory me too. So if I hear a party, I'll always be at the chip and dip or the cheeses rather than the cupcakes. I love a cupcake, don't get me wrong, but yeah, salty savory is my is my way.

I agree. Do you find that because you have more knowledge about food than almost anyone else in this country? Oh, people are reticent to cook for you.

Definitely. My husband Michael and I run restaurants. It's our business. We love our hospitality through and through and live and breathe it. We rarely get an invitation to dinner right through from the wine being served to that. You know, I am just happy with the most simple chop off the barbie or a bowl of Bolonnai's, like I'm not. You know, it's about the.

Comput believe that. I'm sure it's about I.

Know they never do. It's about the company and just the Yeah, they're active coming together at a table and sharing a meal, but they never believe I've roast chicken. I don't care. So I have very close friends that do cook for me, but not many, not many.

When you are at home, it's a Sunday night, you've been working two thousand hours, and you go, oh shit, I haven't eaten since breakfast. I'm starving. At six point thirty. What do you whip up? What would it be?

You know, there's this quintessential phone call I normally get at four in the afternoon, four point thirty from my husband Michael, go, honey, do you want to hand with dinner? Can I organize something for dinner?

Or can I.

Get you know, can I help out? Every day? It doesn't matter what day it is. And sometimes I say, yeah, I'm thinking we're going to have, you know, a grilled chicken or you know, tie marinate a chicken on the barbie and blah blah blah, or a muscle pasta. Can you go and pick up the muscle? He's like, oh no, I don't want to help that much.

I was just I'll help you eat it.

I'm posing the question, so you think about dinner. I've worked it out.

Do you shop fresh every day?

I'm a shop every couple of days.

Look.

Sunday was phenomenal for me because I ended up with so much in the fringe. I thought, well, I'm gonna have to cook some of this stuff. It was a bit tired and I'm feeling a little of color. But this is indulgent, so it's like feast or famine. My girls will say sometimes there's absolutely nothing and we're having the you know, Malaysian takeaway from around the corner, which it happens every couple of weeks in our house.

I love a luxA, I mean the King of Soups.

Where is it by the way, well, Marpo in Parade, Ipo Parade in High Street, Armen. I was just around the corner from where I am.

But I've never been there.

I don't eat in there. I always get takeaway. But the luxe is consistent. It's it's rich, it's a little spiky, and there's a gentle heat to it.

Have you had one? Shinja kurrama nomin? I have to go there too, you must, she must. What about those little puffy, puffy pillows and they absorb all of the flavor of the soup? Yeah, I mean I have been known to suck it out and put it back in the soup.

That is a good idea. Yeah, absolutely, it's a yeah. No, why not that sponge spoon? Yes? So back to food. Yet your your well Sunday.

Was it go to?

Is probably a pasta of some type. I have to say it's.

Your favorite PASTA hard question? I know, I had spaghetti last night, and it's underrated.

But my favorite dish is the one I don't have to cook it home so often. Then that's what Michael made us spread last night from the pantry of tomato salad, and we had some domatoes from a tin and some betta and some compe and pickles and boiled eggs and kip for potatoes. But normal favorite pasta is a prawn taster.

That's what I had last night on the speedet.

I love the prawn pasta and I like to buy the heads on the prawns and then mash them in the pan, and then you put that in the oil with some garlic and fennel seeds and chili, and then add wine after you fried it in the oil, and then add the pasta to that and smash their heads up and then take them out and all the flavors there.

Chrissy, Oh my god, that's not so good.

Maybe a stain of tomato, but not too much, no, not too much tomato can dominate. Then it becomes another pasta.

Sometimes if I just want to hint of tomato, I will use a little tiny bit of tomato paste. Favory confession.

No crazy, I know, sometimes if I want a little hinted tomato, which I would use tomato paste if I was at that stage, or if I'm thinking about food earlier, because let's face it, I cook like it's the last meal I'm going to eat for the rest of my life. Every meal is the last meal I'm gonna have, because that's how I think about food. I can't help it.

Right, So when we're talking about you have everything, you never just go get this in. Yes, you'll still muster up some care, a little bit of.

Care, like I'll go if I've got Sometimes i have the Lemonese pit of bread and I'll smash better in it and oil and salt and pepper and maybe some zata or whatever I've got spice, and then roll that up and that's a snack on the go, I do. I don't mind some packets, ziki and like a Crisp rice cracker or something. If I'm really got nothing going on. Yeah, I don't know. The snacks. Olives, green olives and a martini. Is that a snack?

Yes, I think that couts. I think that cats liquid lunch.

I want to know, chunks of regianna. That's a snack.

So delicious.

Yeah, anchovy is on toast with butter, cold butter. That's the best snack ever.

I had a memory from when I was a kid that I had the best piece of toast in my life, white like tip top butter. My grand made it, and then she'd made a mix of sardines and white onion. Yeah Queenslander. Anyway, people's like pickled white onion or just straight raw raw. Yeah, And it just it just came to me, you know, like those food memories do.

It's tabasco on that being legendary.

I made it and it was wasn't the same gross. I needed her to do it, but she's no longer around. What is your favorite protein? You can only pick one, and it's one of my favorite questions far. We'll give the selection for those listening at home and playing along. Beef, chicken. I'm going to say prawns, crustaceans, crustaceans, fish is different. These are the categories, and I.

Put fish and crustaceans together and say favorite prodsen.

Now, look, I love beef and eggs are also.

I love eggs too. I like all these things for different reasons, and I will cook them like they're the last dish, I'm ever going.

To only choose one. I know it's hard. It's like sophishs choice, particularly for you. Someone says to you, you can only have for the rest of.

My life, for the rest of your life, different thing. Well, then I'd probably go fish because there's so many different types that I eat and enjoy.

It is a very practical and logical choice.

And most people don't eat enough variety, which comes when it comes to fish. They just fish is a problem, or it's it's skinless and unidentifiable. But like flatties, they're great, flatheads awesome.

But it's so wise it.

Is but by by Actually you know what I find if you get the opportunity buy the whole fish and get them to fill it down, it's cheaper than buying the filets.

That is a great tip. So if I go to the fishmonger and say, I'm going to have that hole which fish am I getting snapper? Snapper? I'm gonna get that whole snapper? Please? Can you fill it it? That's it?

Yeah, And then you'll find that it's a different price. It's generally so I.

Just find I've got three kids I've got and they eat a lot. They eat so much and to get enough fish for a meal, you know, I'll get it, and it's.

Then there's nothing.

Look, there's yeah, And I'm just like, that's not even going to fill them up.

Well, then that's where you have to actually cook a little bit more and have a little more whatever it might be a seasoned cuss cuss on the table with maybe you've got a couple of puttets of cherry tomatoes and his rows them in the oven in oil and smash garlic with chili flekes and then they come out and you've got corse course and you toss that through and that's on the table with his fish from that big bowl. And then you get some cucumbers and chop them up and put heaps of lemon and I reckon.

I do a whole podcast on you on fish solutions, Fish solutions. I would love to eat more fish, but I just I just don't know what to do with it. And I think most Australians are the same and they would love.

And we should.

We know when we should. We're an island nation.

Yeah, I agree. It is very expensive, and that's where you need to be able to pair different things with it that complement in a way, or the best way I suppose would be to get the fish, get the bones home that you I know, go figure, but get the head of the snapper with the thing, throw it in a pot, cover with cold water, and add some aromatics to it, like some lemon grass and lime leaves, and throw all that in maybe a couple of tablespoons of lux of paste Tommy Young, and then bring that

A great idea.

So then that goes a lot further and you've got the broth. But you know that says take time and a little bit more focused.

I confidence people would hear that and go, oh my god, I can't do that. I can order something on uber Eats, yes, I'm capable of doing that.

But we can't eat u berrets every day.

No, not good for us. No.

The amount of stuff I mean, takeaways awesome for reasons, and it always tastes good for a reason, but there's a lot of stuff in it that you may not should be eating every day. Yeah, yeah, it's a yeah, it's a funny thing, isn't it. I never do a roast chicken without even if we've picked the bones clean, that that chicken carcass gets flipped into a pot on the back of the stove. I cover it with cold water. I'm dead tired whatever. Maybe watching something on TV for

I have a deep freeze. It's changed my life.

I do have some space, but I must admit it's it's packed jam.

Packed mine too.

What have you got in your deep freeze?

That's key? Well, I I bulk, batch cook because also I show, I show that I love you by giving you a dinner. So I've got for my fiftieth. My request was, you know those look who say they're that big the pot. So I'm like, I'm holding out, like I'm hugging it. It's mass massive, and I will fill that with spaghetti bolonnaise, for example. Make it it cooks forever and then I divvy it up. I'll put that

I agree. I think Spanic coopta. I'm yet to try the one I've been seeing on Instagram a lot where they chop up the philo through the mix, so you get the filo pastry, crack eggs, cooked spinach, frozen spinach from you want, Yeah, handfuls of feather cheese left in the fridge, grate, grate it up, gray it in probably not blue and dial or spring onion or parsley mint, dried mint in. Mix it all together and pour it into a dish and it's like making it frittata, but it's a frittata spanicoppata.

And does it have the crust and the top as well.

The bits of pastry hanging out the top turn into crispy, delicious bits. So yeah, that's on the list for this week. At some stage. And there's the kids. I mean, they love big big slices of that with yogurt so zieki on the side and maybe again salad of something.

I knew this would happen when we got into the same I've not eaten.

I've had two coffees and a mango smoothie and.

You are well, okay, we've at released you back into the wild. Tag you and release you. What is the next thing that is going to pass your lips? Karen Martini?

Okay, I've got in the fridge at home some of the leftover brothy type stuff and official chicken based. It's chicken based, and I added I made it Asian flavor by Chinese flavor by adding sliced spring onion and ginger. I did this the other day on Sunday, and so this is and I've added sugar and soy and balanced it all out. So that's in there. I'm just going to throw in some ood on from the freezer on

What do you order when you're out? Oh?

I don't pre order at a restaurant. I do not like it. You're taking the hospitality out of the hospitality.

All right, I'm going to stop doing that because Karen Miny, you just go. I already know.

I don't want to look at the menu. You do not letting the people do what they do for a living, so true, don't crush their spirit even if you know. But then when you look at it and you go, I don't feel like that. Now I feel like this.

And also I don't know why I do it, because often I order from the specials, which are never.

Now hauling you out. And I'm saying no more pre ordering.

I will not do it.

Discover at the in situ is better.

Yes, I want to say, please enjoy that soup. I don't be alarmed if you turn around in your kitchen and I'm there for my ball.

I would be a bit fun at some stand And I want to.

Officially thank you for the bagel and tarifa of my dream.

I wish I had that in my Fridgeen, How did you come.

Up with that idea? You crazy genius.

You know when you go to Greece and you see those the wheels used to in Athens. Never been to Greece, the round bread that forgive me.

The soft ones, it's like, So that's the Turkish do version and the Greeks do version.

So it's inspired by that and the best Tara mar I could get my hands on. But there's the sweetness on the outside that's really important. Plays with the saltiness. Now I'm hungry. Thank you, any of the best