Marie Claire - Luscious

A CONVERSATION WITH MICHELE CRANSTON – FOOD EDITOR FOR MAIRE CLAIRE AUSTRALIA

Interview by Tara Lee




Luscious: Simply Delicious Food takes readers on a journey to an imagined food paradise.
Michele Cranston continues the
marie claire celebration of fresh food in a new cookbook filled with simple recipes that embody the flavours of a tropical island adventure. The following excerpts are taken from a conversation with Cranston during her recent visit to Vancouver to promote her book. Here she talks about the creative process of creating a cookbook and the dynamic food scene in Australia.




CityFood: You have been the food editor for marie claire Australia since 2000. How did you first start out in the food industry?


Michele Cranston: I've been a chef for 15 years and I initially got into the profession in order to pay my way through university. I was a perpetual student studying art and art history, and was really interested in that for a while. Then I went overseas and when I came back to Australia in 1990, I wanted to bring those two aspects -- the art side and the food side -- together. So I started to do freelance work for magazines, and out of that, I became the food editor of marie claire.



CF: Luscious is the fifth cookbook that you have authored for marie Claire. What is the food philosophy behind the marie Claire cookbooks?


MC: The marie claire cookbooks are all about simple food. They are aimed at the kind of people who don’t feel that confident about cooking and who also prefer a simpler approach to food. Luscious is one of four book that we have planned around the theme of a journey. This one is all about the tropical islands, but it is still about using fresh and simple ingredients.



CF: Does Luscious talk to a particular type of reader? For example, the same young woman who reads marie claire magazine, or does the cookbook transcend gender and age?


MC: When I am writing, I tend to think of young professionals or Mums at home. But in the end, the cookbook appeals to a broad spectrum of people. The magazine is really aimed at younger girls so it focuses on quite a different market. Cookbook readers are surprisingly diverse. So if they are not also fashion magazine readers they can get confused. I have had some guy say: “So you’re Marie Claire.� I say: “No, no, I’m not Marie Claire. Marie Claire is a magazine.� And then they just look at me. Well, I don’t blame them because it actually doesn’t make any sense. But it is interesting to note that the first book that Donna Hay wrote also came out under the marie claire banner. Now the books have became such a huge thing on their own that they have a much wider readership than the magazine.



CF: How long does it take to produce a cookbook like this one?


MC: It takes about six months to a year. I normally spend about two months writing before it goes to the editorial team. After that it goes into the test kitchen and all the recipes get tested. The editorial team that is working on the book comes down at two o’clock every afternoon and tries all the food. So by the end, they have eaten everything in the book! It is a great way for them to get a sense of the book. And it is also a really efficient way to test recipes. There is a second editing period and it also takes about two months to create all the photographs for the book.



CF: Where do you get your ideas?


MC: I am a visual person. When I start to write a cookbook, I begin by drawing it, which is always amusing to everyone else involved. I sit down with a layout of the book. And when I say "draw it", what I mean is that I will start to jot down flavours and ideas, and then I will draw pictures of how I visualize the book. For this one, I actually started to associate it with a lot of Mikkel Vang’s photographs. So I had all this imagery of all these different places and then it was all about filling that in with recipe ideas. If I sat down and said, “I am going to start the book now and I need a hundred and twenty recipes,� I would end up staring at the wall and nothing would come out. It is kind of a terrifying thing if I think about it. But once I start creating the visual images to play with, then I have the framework and I can hang things on it. And that is the best way I can approach the book.



CF: The book is divided into four main themed chapters: Fruit, Leaf, Sea, and Husk. How did you decide on these chapter divisions?


MC: As I said, I always try and make a framework. And so, I thought, “Island. Well, what is it about a tropical island?� I imagined someone sitting on a cartoon version of a tropical island. I thought ... you are surrounded by the sea. Leafy palm trees. You have got tropical fruits. And then I separated it into Fruit, Leaf, Sea, Husk. And once I had done that, it was just a matter of coming up with the recipes.



CF: What role does the visual play in eating?


One thing people really love about the marie claire books is that every single recipe is photographed. And I think that is really important, especially for people who don’t feel confident as a cook, or who are not quite sure about the dish. You can see it. And one of things we do is always try to show each recipe exactly and make sure that you can see every ingredient. And so, you start with the recipe already knowing what you are doing before you begin. Although sometimes people complain that their results look different than the ones in the book. But they don’t go through a whole bag of basil leaves looking to find the prettiest one for the photo. And you know, food at home will never look as good as in a book for that very reason. Because I do stand there and say, “That’s a pretty one. Let’s use that for the book.�



CF: The book features gorgeous photographs of exotic island locations: beaches, hammocks, fishing boats. Where did you shoot most of them?


MC: There was a whole mixture of things. A lot of it was shot in a studio with the sense of an island. We also did some location shots, for example, on an island off the coast of Australia. And then some of them got picked up from photographer Mikkel Vang who does a lot of travel photography. So I ended up going through his library. I would say “tropical theme� and he would bring out these piles of photos and anything that made me go “ah� I would use for the book. To me, that was just what I was talking about. And so, there isn’t an island as such. There is a little of Bali and a little bit of the Fiji Islands in there. And there is a little bit of the Caribbean in there as well. When you think of a tropical island, where does your head go? It is kind of the ideal of an imaginary tropical island.



CF: Do you think this cookbook will appeal especially to city dwellers?


MC: I think so because we can’t all get away. Ideally, we would all be able to get away to a tropical island whever we needed to. One of the things that we wanted to do with the book was to give the reader the feeling that they could pick it up and go on a holiday.



CF: Do you think a sense of adventure is necessary when approaching food?


MC: One of my favourite dishes in the book is a chicken breast cooked with vanilla. I remember reading something years ago about a guy travelling to Madagascar, and he is coming in on the boat, and about a mile away from the island on the sea, he smells vanilla! And suddenly, everyone’s noses are filled with the smell of vanilla as they approach the island. And I wanted to be there. I wanted to smell the vanilla for myself. And so, I thought, “How can I use vanilla in a way that is a little bit different than the way that other people think of vanilla?� But everyone always says, “Vanilla?!� But actually, it is a really lovely spice to use in a different way.



CF: Have travel experiences affected the flavours and style of cooking in the book?


MC: The cookbook is more about the Australian approach to food. It is what I really appreciate after coming back from travelling, what we have in Australia. And one of the things that we have in Australia is a lot of fresh produce. It is a very laid back approach to food. We haven’t grown up with that cultural view of food like they have in France where there is a long standing tradition of food. We are still finding our way, and in the last ten or fifteen years in Australia, there has been a huge explosion of interest in food. And there is this thing about pulling these different pieces together and doing something that works really nicely with fresh ingredients. That has probably been more of an influence for me than travelling.



CF: How much of a difference do fresh ingredients make to your recipes?


MC: I am always going on about ingredients. There is this whole thing of trying to push for the producers with really good ingredients. I know that in Australia it has become a big thing. We have a huge growers market and there has been an upsurge in support for that over the past five years so that on any long weekend, there are about ten different growers markets around Sydney where people can go. I think that is fantastic. People are saying, “I don’t want to go to the supermarket and get food that sat around for three months in cold storage. I want to go buy it from the guy who picked it off the tree yesterday. I want to talk to the egg man about how his chickens are.� I think people just want to get back in touch with their food.



CF: How do you go about creating recipes that will be accessible to even the most novice cook?


MC: I always limit myself to a certain number of ingredients. I’ll you the story of one of the first recipes that I did for the marie claire magazine, a gingerbread. It was heavily spiced and it had this great long list of ingredients in it. And the editor rang me up and said, “No one has the time to shop for that many ingredients!� And I thought, “They are all in the same aisle of the supermarket!� But I could see her point, you know. As soon as you look at something with a long list, you kind of go “ehh.� So I tried to keep the ingredients to a small select group. And also again, in terms of method, when I am testing at home and I am in the process of writing, sometimes there is a recipe that I find time consuming and difficult and that I keep putting aside: “Oh, I will do that one tomorrow.� And if I have done that twice, I think, “Well, if I am doing that, then I don’t have time to do it and no one else has time to do it either.� So that one lands up going into the trash heap.



CF: If I were to host a dinner party next weekend, what recipes from this book would you suggest I use to create the perfect menu?


MC: I am going to go back to that chicken because I think chicken is such a lovely dish. It is so simple and really easy. And I would add a really simple side dish. The salad with bocconcini and asparagus would be really beautiful with an entrée. And the dessert? There is a honey-spiced parfait in there that is really simple and sweet. You have got your vanilla and cardamom flavours in the parfait, in the main you have got vanilla and lemon, and you have got the fresh flavours of the salad. So, you have got a really lovely flavour adventure with those three courses.



CF: What dishes would you suggest for going on a picnic?


MC: Picnic? Let me see. I would actually do something like the grilled prawns with the mayonnaise. I think something like fresh bread and the prawns with mayonnaise. In the book, we have got them on skewers and dip them in mayonnaise but I think that they would be great in sandwiches. I would grill them on in tune to the soothing sounds of Christmas carols drifting in from somewhere.




Tara Lee lives in Vancouver and writes the blog Literary and Culinary Rambles.