The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 52

Good living TUESDAY, MARCH15, 1988 I Thciibnci)21 -i fa is I ft and is always talking up Sydney, which he thinks is "a great IT is Saturday evening and Amanda and Mark are giving a dinner party in their Federation home at Mosman. It has been planned for a month and guests were invited just over three weeks ago. Ten of them. All couples. All roughly the same age as their hosts.

All, like their hosts, successful and enjoying the fruits of their labours in the form of houses with harbour views, a nanny for the children, an overseas trip at least once a year. And the occasional formal dinner like this evening's. Formal dinners are such fun, aren't they? They give one the chance to dress up in a party frock and clamp on that darling little choker Mark bought at Bulgari last time they were in Rome. Well, after all, Terry bought Lisa-Anne one and, goddam it, he's not earning nearly as much as Mark. Amanda ponders her seating plan, drawn up mid-week, while Mark adjusts his bow tie.

The waiter has been hired for the evening. One has to be so careful what with burglaries and boys turning up stoned, or with dirty fingernails, but then Amanda has had Troy before and he's neat and polite and, well, people would almost think he was staff. Out in the kitchen, the team from Food Formal and French, a cook and two mousy lady helpers, are neurotically arranging garnishes, like those little bundles of beans tied up with a single chive. It was such a hit last time that Amanda just had to have them again. One of the lady helpers is fighting a losing battle with an unyielding chive and a bunch of over-lubricated beans.

horeigners love the easy way of life here," he says. "And when they are entertained they much prefer to have a barbecue or a luncheon in the garden enjoying the weather, the magnificent produce and the beautiful setting of the harbour." Feuillatte makes no" fuss when his sophisticated European friends are in town. Recently he took Gianni Versace and his entourage out on a boat for a a harbour lunch of prawns, rare roast beef and salads and the Italians loved I it. I "Nothing is worse," says Feuillatte with considerable force, "than to be in black tie locked up in an air-f conditioned dining room at a boring imitation of a European dinner party. 5 So-called Sydney society is often trying i to copy what is happening in London, jj Paris and New York instead of 3 entertaining in a way that suits their personality and is more comfortable.

i "Australians are not really sophisti- cated in the European sense," he says. And pseudo-sophistication simply i doesn't suit them." I Carriol anci Feuillatte have no shortage of supporters for their thep-1 ries. i "People try too hard when they're jj entertaining," says Joan Campbell, editor of Vogue's Entertaining Guide 3 and one of the most respected food personalities and practitioners in theS country. Veteran of more parties than she i cares to remember, Campbell is -'a confirmed disciple of simplicity, andf Continued page 2 When Good Living previewed the death of the dinner party in the US, many people asked how it was faring in Australia. LEO SCHOFIELD has the answers on dining at home.

and air conditioning, when a few metres away was a terrace where we could have enjoyed a much more relaxed and unrestricted Carriol. Fellow Frenchman Nicolas Feuil-latte is in complete concurrence with Carriol. Feuillatte, who heads the Yves Saint Laurent operation here, and also has the distinction of having his very own brand of champagne, regards himself, when overseas, as Australia's best ambassador. He spends three months a year here doesn't range much beyond electrical appliances, real estate prices, the stock market and what's in Dorian Wild's column this week, the evening should be counted a success. That's what they'll write in their bread and butter letters.

Triumph, darling. Just the best. You're so clever. But there's a small problem. Is this kind of competitive entertaining really appropriate to Sydney, to our climate, to our way of life? Definitely not, say most people who should know.

The dinner described above is, of course, a mythical one. But few sociable Sydneysiders would not have attended something similar. Michel Henri Carriol, the urbane Frenchman who heads Trimex, a company that imports luxury products from France, has been to lots. And continues to be amazed that Sydneysiders, blessed with good weather for most of the year, prefer to lock themselves indoors to eat "I have been to a black-tie dinner in the middle of summer in a room with closed windows, heavy drapes, candles The guests arrive at eight. Golly, doesn't the house look fantastic? Who did the flowers? Champagne? Try and stop me.

By 8.45, the last guest has bundied in, and Amanda, in a voice like a bosun's whistle, summons her guests to table. There is much oohing and aahing over the table flowers. Just old gum-nuts, darling, sprayed with Silvafros. Cost no money, but so effective. The food is a triumph.

Little individual butternut pumpkins, each filled with a Thai seafood curry. These are followed by medallions of lamb, four to a plate, in a demi-glace flavoured with raspberry vinegar. There are also bean bundles and individual turnip flans. And a sorbet Sorbets are Amanda's thing. She always has a sorbet This one is made from Earl Grey tea, and it helps, but only-just, to cool down the guests in the overheated dining room, ready for the individual warm kiwi fruit tartlets with King Island cream that follow.

And the coffee and chocs after that And, although the conversation Cure-all with a whiff of romance FADS Robin Ingram Ermenegildo Zegna Imported from Europe I KN JolmRirdoe SYDNEYSIDERS can currently be divided into two major categories those who've been flattened by the 'flu, and those who credit garlic tablets with their escape. The garlic remedy fad is raging again, but you wouldn't want to be waiting with bated or any other kind of breath for the issue to be settled. There's been a whiff of controversy about garlic's 66 Pice Street opp. Australia Sq. Sydney.

SALE 8 3 20 50 1M It is classified as a febrifuge (fever reducer or preventer), vermifuge (human body worm expel-ler), sudorific (sweat producer), diuretic (fluid excretion promoter), antibiotic (bacteria inhibitor or destroyer) and poison antidote. If true, it should be able to cure almost anything except those tenuous television commercial relationships based on breath freshness. The pungency of garlic comes from a compound named allicin, and it is the allicin that is so valuable to the body. The body is, in fact, a veritable allicin wonderland: Tests have indicated that penicillin inhibits only gram-positive bacteria, while allicin is active against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Despite these attributes, garlic has been the object of scorn from everyone from Roman poets to Australian bigots.

Greeks who ate garlic were not permitted to enter the ancient temple of Cybele and weren't all that welcome at the RSL at Marrickville. The Roman poet Horace called the herb "more poisonous than And the 17th century diarist Sir John Evelyn wrote: "To be sure, 'tis not for the Ladies Palat (sic), nor for those who court them The current garlic fad is accompanied by a spectrum of weird and wonderful claims with physicians and their patients heralding effective treatment of cancer, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, sinusitis, colitis, diarrhoea, conjunctivitis, eye, ear, nose and mouth infection, bronchitis and asthma, hemorrhoids, vaginal yeast infection, athlete's foot, mosquito infestation, acne, influenza, and alcohol hangover. It seems that with a clove of garlic in your medicine cabinet you can breathe easy if carefully. But if pain persists, as they say in the commercials, consult a doctor. off UN 1 1 WOOL DHURRIES WOOL PILE RUGS Si healing powers tor at least as long as 5,000 years, for Sanskrit records the use of garlic remedies from that period.

Closely related to that more romantic bulb, the lily, garlic has been touted throughout history as a healer and medical preventive, an aphrodisiac, a talisman, and a culinary sachet pretty much something K-Tel would have been proud to have in its catalogue. The Chinese used it as far back as 3,000 years ago, and Egyptian medical records dating from 1SS0BC list garlic prescriptions for the cure of high blood pressure, to retard aging, combat dandruff, relieve, lice, skin trouble, ulcers, worms, respiratory disease, flatulence and other intestinal disorders, and to counter that apparently age-old and universal horror, the onset of greying hair. Before the turn of the century, before the development of modern antibiotics, garlic was on the lips of all British physicians. They used it in the form of inhalants, compresses and ointments to treat everything up to and including tuberculosis, the number one killer at the time. And on the battlefield during World War workers in British Army field hospitals pressed the Juice from garlic bulbs, diluted it with water, and Robyn Cosgrove Rugs applied the mixture to sterile bandages for treating and combating infections.

Many a wounded limb was saved from amputation by stemming the incidence of wet gangrene with liquid garlic compresses. But the mixture of garlic fumes and mustard gas in the trenches must have set the promotion of French and Greek cuisine back by several decades. Despite Russia's standing today as a leader in medical research, garlic is still referred to as "Russian An ancient Russian folk remedy, it has received scientific verification of its medical validity in Russia. A 'flu epidemic in Russia still creates a massive garlic demand, and precious foreign currency reserves often have to be used to import garlic products on such occasions. Apart from a remarkable nutritional content which embraces calcium, phosphorous, iron, sodium, potassium, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and ascorbic acid, garlic is particularly rich in sulphur-containing compounds and amino acids.

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