Elizabeth Hewson (bite-sized)

On Saturday Night Pasta's Elizabeth Hewson's menu: Peter Gilmore's Snow Egg at Quay Restaurant, the most perfect poached egg with truffle in Italy, and the start of Saturday Night Pasta. 

If you like this mini episode - make sure to listen to the full one, out tomorrow! (and tell your friends to listen to!) 

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Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you! 

TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

So let's start with the first one. Tasting the snow egg for the very first time. Now tell us about this snow egg.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

So if anyone doesn't know, which I would be surprised if you don't, the snow egg is probably one of Australia's most iconic desserts by Peter Gilmour at Key Restaurant, which sadly is no longer with us. Not not Pete, but the restaurant, which closed earlier this year. Peter created this dessert back in I think 2010 or just before that. And it was just on the cusp before Key had hit the world stage of being in the top 50 restaurants. But he was winning a lot of accolades in Australia. And this dessert is a meringue filled with custard and with a toffee shell nestled on a again a custard fool with some granita. It's nestled in this beautiful Riedel glass. And I had never seen anything like it when it came out. How did you come across the egg? So I was working, I had my first job. I was working in a PR agency and they were representing Key. And my boss at the time brought me in to listen to a meeting, a work in hand. We were sitting in this beautiful restaurant, Key situated in the dress circle of Circular Key. You know, so you've got the the stage of the opera house and the harbour bridge, the waters glistening. You know, we're going through what's what activities are happening. Um, and Peter comes out. It's the first time I've met Pete, and he's holding this plate with this glass in the middle and brings it out, and he says to Naomi, um, my boss at the time, and her colleague Brookin, I was just sitting there absorbing.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

That's what she told you to do. She did.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Her you know, my and it is the words of wisdom that I think about all the time. Be a sponge. You know, you don't know anything, you're new, don't try and contribute, just sit there and absorb. And so I was sitting around the table, and Pete brought out this plate and he put it down and he said, you know, this is my latest dessert. You know, he said, Everyone have a try. And we cracked into this egg, and I had just never tasted anything like it.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Your second food memory is eating the perfectly poached egg with shaved truffles on top with a glass of Nebbiola in Alba.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So I lived, as we were saying before, in Italy in a town called Bra to study my uh masters in food culture, and it was at the University of Gastronomic Science, which is where the slow food movement was born. And one day, maybe I don't know, a couple of weeks in, I was feeling particularly homesick. I had left Tom, he proposed to me two weeks before. I left for Italy. Um had you said yes before? I said yes, yes, yes. So I went engaged. Um and I was feeling really homesick, you know. I was living by myself and I'd made some great friends in my class. There were 19 students from 12 different countries. And, you know, I guess being from Australia, I was the only one from Australia. Everyone else was sort of Europe. So it was quite easy to get home. And this it was a long weekend, I think everybody sort of went back to their families. So I found myself alone for the first time. And, you know, I remember feeling really mopey around the house, and I thought, you know, I suddenly had this, you're an Italy girl. Get out, you're living your dream, you've always wanted to do this. And so I put, you know, the best Aussie girl does Italy dress on. It was a red dress with white polka dots.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

I So this is like a is it like Elizabeth in in in in Italy?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yes. I like to lean into that. Um and got the train to Alba, which was only 20 minutes away, and it was truffle season, and so the the whole city came alive. They did a truffle for this.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

It's a truffle, it's a truffle, it's all it's famous for its white truffle.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

It's famous for its white truffles, um, for all the truffles, really. And I, you know, arrived and Alba's famous for also for its bell towers, and it was quite an affluent area. So in the in the past, the bell towers were the taller the bell tower, the richer you were. So I was wandering around the streets and I found this beautiful little wine bar under, you know, under this gorgeous bell tower, and sat there and ordered this um egg, poached egg, with truffles and two ingredients. Incredibly simple, but done to, you know, the absolute best. And he came out and he brought the truffle and he started shaving it over, and you know, it fell like a leaf falling from a tree and poured the glass of wine that was from the hills behind me. And I just remember having this comp this moment of I cannot believe food tastes this good from two ingredients. And I think from then on it was again that um, you know, pursuit of beautiful ingredients done simply. Back to the memory. Yes. So Saturday night pasta. I was going through a really difficult time and I I was struggling, and Tom was traveling. One day I thought I had the call to make something with my hands. And I have always loved, you know, eating pasta and obviously lived in Italy, so made made a bit of pasta, but we'd made pasta before. Yeah, yeah, but wouldn't make it often. Um but I thought I want to absorb myself in something. So I turned on my favourite music and the soundtrack, which is important to Saturday Night Pasta, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra. I just loved that era. Poured myself a glass of red wine and I made a sauce that required very little of me. Tomato sauce that could just, you know, simmer on the stove in the back. And then I needed some dough, and I was, you know, channeling the frustrations and anger and sadness I felt, um, which is a good, good, good way to release. And then I better than hitting the wall. True. And then I started, you know, pulling the dough through the pasta machine and I made Taglatelli. And I realized for the first time in a really long time I was present. I hadn't been thinking about work or checking emails or, you know, picking up my phone, and it was completely addictive and soul restoring in a way that I hadn't experienced food to be. And I, you know, going back to this obsessive curious part, I repeated it again the following Saturday because you need time, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

You talk about the dough, the the the the colour of the dough, mixing the eggs with the flour, and all of a sudden it just goes yellow and it transforms. How what was that making you feel?

SPEAKER_00 7:06

I mean, happy. Just the brightness of it.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

That came from the yolk of the egg.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, but then even making, you know, semolina, which is just a different type of flour and water, and the kind of paleness of that. I just found the whole experience really calming. And I then continued it every Saturday night and slowly started sharing it on social media and then pe you know, and hashtag, because that's what you did back then. Hashtag Saturday nightpasta because I was literally making pasta on a Saturday night. Um, and then slowly people sort of asked, Oh, what's this? And, you know, because at the time social media was a very friendly place. You know, people then started making giving it a go. And slowly people were hashtagging Saturday night pasta, and I had friends over and taught them, and then they would go home and do it. And yeah, then the book deal came and Saturday night pasta the book was born. Self-care rituals for the home cook.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

But then there was another thing that came out of that the tomato pa the tomato sauce, the jar pasta sauce.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Yes. So take yourself back to COVID lockdown.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Um, all the restaurants closed down, obviously, and I had a lot of time on my hands. And I thought, you know, the book was out. The book came out in October 2020. And I thought, oh, what am I gonna do with time? And also I had this access to these amazing ingredients through the restaurants. So I curated the self-care packs. Um and for the restaurants. No, no, for just people that followed me. Right. And I sold them online, yeah. Just through social media. Um, and I was selling 70 a week, very easy boxes of a ready-made pasta. One of my friends um is an amazing pasta maker. He was making fresh pasta for hotels and you know, restaurants, and that was all closed. So I would buy little, you know, 300 gram packs of fresh pasta and curate a very simple recipe. Selling about 70 a week, and they, you know, I couldn't keep up. And I thought to myself, wow, you know, there's people I find a lot of joy in slowing down and making something from scratch, but there's equal joy to be had from throwing something together in 10 minutes. And that's when I started walking the supermarket aisles and seeing that all pasta sauces were the same. They were all very traditional, very Italian, labels were black and white. Meanwhile, over in the condiment aisle, it's bursting with originality and personality and colour and brand. And I thought as a marketer, hmm, I wonder if you did that to pasta sauce. And then I thought, well, what would be the pasta sauce, you know, if I was to do one? And one of my self-care packs was a vodka pasta sauce, and it went completely nuts. Like it sold out within an hour, which I thought was so strange because it was such a simple sauce recipe. So I thought, okay, well, I'll do a vodka sauce. There was nothing on the shelf like that. Um, but what was my spin on it? And I wanted to add a unique Australian flair. So I added lemon myrtle leaves, and actually, that was sitting with Lennox at fire door testing a whole lot, and he had some, and we threw that in there, and it was amazing how it changed the profile. I I cook a lot with olive brine, I think it's a magic ingredient, so added that, and that became more like a dirty martini. And so the dirty martini pasta sauce was born, and it it took me a year because I thought if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it properly. Um, and I found an amazing manufacturer um who believed in me and what I wanted to do, and you know, there it was, and Tom, you know, the the the realist said to me, Um, what are you gonna do with a ton of pasta sauce? You know, do you know how big a palette is? And of course I didn't, you know, I did not think of any of the operation logistics. I was a creative. And um, so I, you know, got my skates on and the restaurant started opening up, and I had a friend through the restaurants, gave me a warehouse space to store it. I started um promoting it on social, and then I reached out to 50 of my favorite retailers. Um, and I have to say, the source arrived, and you'll you'll appreciate this in December. Now no one wants to talk to you in December. But, you know, I naively didn't know anything about that. So I reached out to my favorite stores, and to my surprise, a lot of them wrote back and said, Yeah, we'd we'll take a cardin. And by January, I was sold out. So the end of January, early, yeah, early Feb, I had sold out. I had a pastor as well, and I was hand packing the coveralls. I was six months pregnant. I was selling a lot through social media as well, you know, packing till midnight, getting them out. And, you know, that's when I thought, hmm, maybe there is an idea here.