After an absolutely wretched semester of uni, I rushed back to Mildura once again for a break and some quality time with my family. Much is the same, only a change to freezing cold nights, frosty mornings, but never to fail me: calm sunny days.
Since last visit, mother's garden has grown in abundance: silver beet, lettuces, flowers blooming, the lemon tree heavy with fruit, a great bush of lemongrass, long red chillies and even strawberries ripening..
Mildura boasts of a perfect climate for agriculture, which is shame due to the recent deregulation in the grape industry, resulting in my family selling our vineyard. Mildura has had a huge shift in this way, with many people who owned small 10-40 acre vineyards, being forced to sell, hardly able to even break even for their year-long hard work. It's heart breaking, that such a thing could happen to something as beautiful as it was. Now when I drive down the same road that we used to live on, many acres of land have been cleared because the vines were just useless. Some summers, our neighbours would just let the grapes ripen on the vines until they shribbled and fell off because no winery or company wanted to take fruit from "petty" farmers. My next door neighbour even drove all the way to Vic Market one year to try to make a small buck for as much as he could bring in his ute.
Locals I have spoken to that had owned vineyards long before we bought the property, boasted of the good times: when a 30acre block could gain a decent profit and it was all worth it. My family moved to Mildura in 96' and owned the vineyard for 12 years, with a rapid decline in return from a few years in. Initially were contracted with wineries for our sultana grapes and for the small portion of chardonnay. After a few years the industry started to change: we lost our contract to the winery, shifting to only contract large 100+acre vineyards. This change threw off so many of the majority of average 30acre farmers, and that's when it all started to go downhill. We then gained a contract with Sunbeam, to dry sultanas which involved an enormous amount of labour for all of us and with less return. Slowly slowly, Sunbeam would cut back their contract with us, as a result in the growing replacement of cheaper overseas import. Eventually, as for many, we were forced to sell: an incredible heartbreak for my father. So many farmers, not only in Mildura were adversely affected by this deregulation and the neglect of Australian authorities, on top of the result of little water allocation for Mildura and surrounding areas due to the drought.
Ever since being exposed to the nasties and lack of support for small farmers in the agricultural industry in Australia, only made me more passionate to make an effort to seek out small producers of all food. It is so important that the public understand how these industries are operating at present. It is a very serious issue. A lot of farmers have experienced debilitating depression from losing their jobs: as self employed farmers. And from that, some people have died. For the farming families, being a farmer was in their blood being passed on from the generations, inheriting land and vines from their parents, grandparents and so on. And then it was all useless and cleared. Be sure to buy local and support small business where ever you are in the world :)
Anyway! Some sort of winter hibernating instinct in me was yearning to eat some winter food, and the only answer was chicken soup! For my family, I would say quite confidently that our Nana's chicken soup is the absolute peak of comfort food. But it is not any old chicken soup.
For our soup we used a whole chicken cut up and an extra 4 legs which was all cleaned very well to remove as much of the remaining guts and "slime" off the chicken carcass. This is important to result in a clear and clean tasting stock. Vegetables included: carrots, parsnip, sweed, cabbage, celery, onion, garlic and a huge bunch of fresh parsley from the garden. We're gonna' eat that too !
Then simmer away for 2 hours or so until all that goodness from the chicken bones has made a beautiful sweet stock.
Then we get on to the noodles. I have never made these fresh noodles for soup in my life, but luckily my mum has. My mum learnt how to make these noodles from my Nana who learnt from my great-grandmother and so on. These noodles are traditional Hungarian noodles suitable for soups. I asked Nana how to make them and she instructed, "a few cups of flour and 1 egg or 2 eggs or 1 egg with a bit of water, it just depends." So taking those instructions I had a go, firstly using 3 cups of four and 1 egg. She told me the dough needs to be hard enough so you can grate it, not too soft also and don't work it too much. So I did, but the mix was still too dry. With help of my experienced Mama, we added more water gradually until it was soft enough to grate but not so dry that it would crumble.
Enough soup is transfered into a separate pot to boil the noodles. You must cook these noodles in the chicken stock otherwise they turn out quite bland. This only takes a few minutes with a taste test being the best indicator. The soup is served in the way that we always have: to pull out the vegetables and meat and place on separate plates and the soup is served on the table with the noodles kept it's own pot.
So I accomplished to make my Nana's soup noodles for the first time! They were so delicate and soft just like I had remembered them. It had been at least two years since I had eaten these noodles because my Nana is getting older, and cooking the things she loves has become more difficult lately. Nana would always cook this on birthdays and other occasions as a first course and also on the times I would sleep over with my brother. My family did eat chicken soup once a week throughout my childhood, but my mum wouldn't make her own noodles. So when I eat these fresh noodles, it reminds me sharing beautiful food with all my family. Food has such a strong connection with memories so to eat this soup is really so special to me. My ultimate comfort food.
