Pierre Khodja

It’s not unusual for chefs to wax lyrical about meals shared with their children. Most nights they tiptoe to bed hours after the kids are tucked in, so family dinners “ when they happen “ are special. But Pierre Khodja, chef at Hawthorn’s Canvas restaurant, becomes particularly emotional when he talks about enjoying meals with his wife, Debbie, and their daughters Jamila, Anisa and Haniya. He has good reason: five years ago, it looked like the Khodjas may have eaten together for the last time.

One chilly winter Tuesday in 2002, the family dined together before service began at Khodja’s Albert Street Restaurant in Mornington. When the girls and Debbie headed home, Khodja and his apprentice made the final preparations for the evening’s dinner rush. After fiddling unsuccessfully with a stubbornly flame-free log fire in the dining room, the apprentice threw methylated spirits onto the kindling. Bang. “The flame went into the bottle. The bottle exploded, says Khodja. “I burned my lungs. My lungs gave in. My heart stopped twice. No hair. We were shredded. The pair were taken by helicopter to the Alfred Hospital, where Khodja spent two-and-a-half months recovering. “At 5 o’clock, I was eating with my family. At 7 o’clock, I was dying. Just like that. It was horrible, he says.

Khodja had endured the disintegration of the business partnership that had brought him to Australia from London in 2001. The physical and financial fall-out of the fire threatened to force the family to shelve their sunny Australian dream and retreat to Europe. But with the support of the Mornington community, Khodja came back to work and, slowly, to health. (The apprentice who suffered in the fire now cooks in Queensland.) Khodja battled on at the Albert Street Restaurant until mid-2006. His local fans were loyal but few in number, and tourists sometimes had trouble focusing on his fine north African-influenced food after a day at the wineries. Khodja was about to sign up with a Mornington Peninsula winery restaurant when he got the
call from Canvas late last year. He leapt at the chance. He enjoys work in the big smoke, and being an employee is a relief after years of mixing business worries with cooking. “It’s a happy time, he says. “Hallelujah, you know? If I can cope with all that, I can cope with anything.

Khodja grew up in Algiers in the 1960s, where he played in the back streets with “jasmine going crazy over the houses and the scent of cinnamon and cumin wafting through the air. His mother was always cooking “ “Mum’s second bedroom was the kitchen, he jokes. As well as cous cous and tagines, his mother would whip up wonderful quick bites, big on intuition. “My mum had a little saucepan with no handle. She would chop up some tomatoes with a funny little knife that could hardly cut. Some garlic. Throw in some brains, an egg, parsley. That was my lunch. The taste hits you right between the eyes. When he was seven, Khodja and his family moved to Marseille “because it’s more north African than anywhere else. He trained
as a chef in Paris and moved to England in the early 1980s, where he worked at restaurants including Ma Cuisine and with Bruno Loubet at Bistro Bruno.

London in the 1980s and 1990s was “150 miles an hour. “You were cooking for big shots. The chef is god. It’s head down. No breaks. You eat standing up. Push, push, push. The food media were rapacious. “You can have 35 people for lunch and five of them are journalists. It was very, very scary, says Khodja. But in most workplaces, the scariest thing of all was the head chef. Khodja considers Bruno Loubet a mentor (he’s now cooking in Brisbane at Baguette), but the French master was also something of a tyrant who cared only that the food was perfect and on time. It wasn’t easy, not least because Khodja and his colleagues didn’t have enough saucepans and utensils to do their jobs properly. So severe was the deficit that the young chefs would hide cooking equipment from one another while packing up each night. “Then, next morning, whoever got the saucepans first would be ahead, he says. “This was one
of London’s best restaurants. It was crazy times.

By 2000, Khodja was running Base Restaurant in Hampstead, but it wasn’t hard to leave London for Australia. “We came here on holiday, he explains. “The kids were running on the beach. It was hot, beautiful. I said to my wife, ˜How can I stop my kids from having this?’ Still, it’s only since he’s been at Canvas that Australian life has started rolling along smoothly. If Pierre Khodja learnt anything from the fire, it was to appreciate time with his family “ “live every day, don’t take things for granted “ so, every Sunday, they come together for a big north African spread. “Food is about culture and closeness, says Khodja. “I might be standing there cooking and one daughter comes over to tell me about her iPod, while the little one is climbing on a stool to help. He appreciates his children’s honesty as well as their assistance. “If they don’t like something, they’ll tell me the truth, he says. Indeed, at today’s
meal, seven-year-old Haniya announces “you made my whole dinner disgusting when onion jam is dolloped on her cous cous. Khodja doesn’t mind: it’s all part of developing their palates. Food is at the heart of his identity as a father. “I’m not great at computers, I can’t build a house, I’m not an electrician, he says. “I know cooking. I want to know that they’re full, happy, content, so they’ll have nice dreams and wake up with energy. That’s what I can do for my kids.

*UPDATE Pierre is now cooking at Terminus at the Flinders Hotel

Lamb cous cous with vegetables, harissa and onion jam
For the lamb:
4 tbs olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1kg lamb leg, bone removed and cut into large dice (or six small shanks)
4 lamb Merguez sausages
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 tbs tomato puree
11/2 litres hot water
6 cups mixed vegetables cut into about 2cm x 2cm cubes (use
carrots, zucchini, turnips)
1 cup cooked chickpeas
chopped parsley, to serve
chopped coriander, to serve
steamed cous cous, to serve
Heat the oil in a large pot and cook the onion until softened. Add the lamb
and sausages and cook until browned. Add the black pepper, paprika
and cinnamon and cook for 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add the tomatoes and tomato puree and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add 1.5 litres of hot water. Season with salt and pepper. Add all vegetables and chickpeas and cook gently on low heat for one hour until meat is tender.

Reserve one cup of cooking liquid for the onion jam recipe (to follow).

Garnish with parsley and coriander. Serve the lamb stew over steamed cous cous,
with harissa (see below).

Serves 4

Sultana and onion jam
1 tbs butter
1 large onion, sliced
1 tbs honey
1 cup sultanas
1 cup lamb stew stock

Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan. Saute the onion in the butter
until soft. Add honey, sultanas and the stock (from the lamb stew). Cook on a low
heat for about 15 minutes until a jammy consistency is achieved. Serve on the side
with the lamb and cous cous.

Harissa
100g dried chilli
4 cloves garlic
2 tbs coarse salt
3 tsp coriander seed
3 tsp cumin seed
1/2 cup olive oil

Remove and discard seeds from the chillies. Put the chillies in hot water
to soften. Remove and drain, then chop roughly. Pound in a mortar and pestle until
a paste is formed. Remove and set aside.

Pound the garlic with half the salt until smooth. Remove and set aside. Pound coriander and cumin to a powder. Return all ingredients to the bowl and mix
with olive oil. Season with remaining salt.

Cinnamon and orange cream custard with strawberry and Cointreau salad
For the custard:
500ml milk
1 cinnamon stick
175g sugar
peel of 1 orange
50g cornflour
6 egg yolks, lightly beaten
extra sugar for sprinkling

For the strawberry salad:
1 punnet strawberries, stalks removed
30ml Cointreau
pinch of caster sugar

Bring milk to the boil with cinnamon, sugar and orange peel. Remove from heat once
bubbling and pass through a fine sieve. Take 1 cup of the infused milk and dissolve cornflour in it by whisking together quickly. Add the egg yolks to the rest of the milk and cook gently over very low heat until thickened, stirring with a wooden
spoon. Remove from heat and add the cornflour-milk mixture and mix together
well.

Divide the mixture between 6 small ramekins and refrigerate to set. When set, sprinkle sugar on top and carefully caramelise under a hot grill (be careful not to burn).

Wash strawberries well and pat dry with kitchen paper. Cut each strawberry in
half. Dress with Cointreau and a sprinkle of sugar. Toss together gently and leave
to marinate at room temperature for 5-10 minutes. Serve with cream custards.

Moroccan tea with fresh mint
4 tbs Chinese gunpowder green tea
small handful of fresh mint leaves
8 tsp caster sugar
6 cups boiling water

Rinse a teapot with hot water. Place the tea, mint leaves and sugar in the teapot.
Pour boiling water over the tea leaves, then leave to infuse for 5 minutes. Stir to
dissolve sugar.