Clean lines and beef cheeks

No. 1 ⏐ 2025

I can’t remember the first 24 hours of Sadie.

It has been turning over in my mind; the way we forget the trauma of birth and the immediate aftermath, as if it’s an inbuilt mechanism to promote procreation. Who would go through it multiple times if you could so easily recall bending over the edge of a hospital bed, a pillow across your strained middle, while the hot sting of anaesthetic spreads through your body, your husband’s hand gripping your knuckles? Or the acute ruptures of another contraction, taught elastics pulled apart, making your breath catch? The emptied catheter bags. The blood.
Those are the moments that lose their outline over time.

What I do remember, though, is when Sadie was held up to me. Her long limbs hanging by her side—like a droopy frog—eyes closed. I remember the feeling of overwhelm. While surgeons, anaesthetists, midwives, paediatricians, machines, lights, clocks ticked, there was a moment of shock between mother and child.

This thing you have created is here—and you have made it, block by block. The long bus trips shifting weight from side to side, the nights slept upright to push down reflux, the indecipherable, scratchy ultrasounds, the intolerant numbers on the scales creeping ever higher, the injections night after night, the never-remembered white obstetrics card, the sapped energy like a rusty battery lying in a kitchen drawer—all of it building to meet this person, this moment. It comes with both familiarity and reserve.

Mother and Child, Henry Moore, 1936

After the shock, you drink up the baby.

Lying on my chest, I stared at her flat, pearly, fingernails, the bow of her bottom lip, the downy fluff of her hair. Her breath rose and fell arrhythmically, slow against the sterile beeps. Most of all I remember the comforting weight of her on my skin—a momentary extension of me, outside my body—and the gradual realisation that she will drift. With every wash and wipe of vernix and fluid, you leave her, or she leaves you. The clock on the wall is indifferent. She will love purple, she will hate beans and she will want a song played on repeat in the car, so help her God. She is a new thing, with new demands on life.

Those are some instances that I do recall—some moments that have stayed.

Wearing

To wholly less intense sentiments, let’s talk clothing. Please excuse the whiplash.

If you’re partial to New Zealand designers, specifically Harris Tapper and the like, then Rebe Burgess is one to eye up (an aside: Lauren Tapper and Burgess are friends socially). The Auckland-based designer has set up her ready-to-wear brand, Rebe. It’s simple, structured and one to consistently muscle out other hangers in your closet. Essentials for the wardrobe and a clean mind.

Burgess is well-versed in luxury apparel, having worked as a buyer and designer before setting up her own label. Starting with accessories and footwear, she turned her craft to clothing in 2023, building on the brand’s signature sleek, minimalist aesthetic. Think: a work capsule made of neat lines that, in the same stride, chameleon into drinks and dinner. Feminine and masculine in the one silhouette. Classics, reimagined. Cloudy martinis with tuna cheek tartare huddled around a circular bistro table.

My picks for two wardrobe stayers below:

Satin tee dress

Straight tailored trouser

Eating

This recipe needs little introduction. It’s a mainstay in the cooler months because:

• it’s simple to make

• tastes damn good

Developed by Frank Camorra of MoVida, this beef cheek dish has been around for more than twenty years. And it uses a cheap cut!

Originally popping up in his back lane restaurant in Melbourne, where the concept of eating up at the bar was fairly novelty at the time, the dish has clung on through various menu iterations. Reams of search results pop up for ‘MoVida beef cheeks’, testament to those that have taste and those who know how to cultivate it. Doers and tasters.

Flavour: It’s warm, thanks to the star anise and cinnamon, the sherry brings a bitter turn and the meat has that gelatinous quality once it’s been slow-cooked. It is winter in a bowl—slop it in.

You could add bone broth powder, concentrate or your own stock in place of water to up the nutrients.

Enjoy.

Marina Oliphant

• 3kg beef cheeks

• 100ml olive oil

• 2 brown onions, chopped

• 1 whole head of garlic, split

• 2 carrots, chopped

• 1/4 bunch thyme

• 3 fresh bay leaves

• 1 cinnamon stick

• 2 star anise

• 1lt Pedro Ximenez sherry

• 500ml red wine

1. Heat oven to 200C. Clean sinew from beef cheeks, season with sea salt and place cheeks on a baking tray. Bake in oven for about 10 minutes each side. Remove when well browned.

2. In a heavy-based pot, heat olive oil and caramelise onion, garlic head and carrots. Add herbs and spices and cook for 3 minutes. Add sherry and wine, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

3. Add browned cheeks, top up with 1 litre of water, cover with baking paper and a lid, then simmer for 3 hours or until tender. The cheeks should be tender but firm enough to stay intact. To test this, squeeze the cheek - if it's soft but doesn't fall apart, it's ready.

4. Remove cheeks from sauce and place in a small baking tray. Reduce sauce by half and pass through a sieve over cheeks.

5. Serve with cauliflower puree (simply steam cauli and blend with cream or sour cream)- spoon some puree into the centre of a plate, place a cheek on the edge of the puree, then spoon a small amount of sauce over.

Serves about 8

Living

Caroline Walls paints, draws and sculpts. Her look is distinctive—you’ve probably seen her large scale works positioned above dumbwaiters and over beds. The pieces are abstract, but she has a propensity to focus on the female figure, and that, in particular, is what drew me to her. That, and the tonal colour palette she uses, letting the lines speak for themselves—no distractions.

Here’s one of two pieces I bought from Caroline about five years ago. It sits outside our bedroom and I think it is perfectly rounded, accurate, soft, but also ready. There is an athletic buoyancy to her limbs.

Walls:

As a woman myself, I really like this idea of females representing and interpreting the female. If you look back through the history books, it is rare to find works that depict the female nude form by a female artist. Instead, women are only seen and depicted through the eyes of a male, so I think in that sense it’s incredibly important that female artists continue to explore what is truly ours.

See you next week, and if you enjoyed this please like, follow and restack. In the wise—niche—words of Tesco, every little helps.

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