Controversy Ahoy

I started this last week and kept not finishing it off to post properly. Sorry. I've got a lot of posts coming up this week to make up for it. It's a little controversial, so let's just bite the bullet and get those points out of the way first.

1. Organic food is not better for you.
2. Michael Pollan is a bit of a dickhead.

Wait, what? Well, these two topics have been floating round the intertoobz recently.

First, organic food. Ben Goldacre has a good article on the topic. Basically a couple of studies came out in the UK that showed no nutritional benefits to organic food. There is no measurable difference in chemical composition or in health benefits.

I'm actually not surprised by this one little bit. I've never been a fanatic about organic foods - I place fair trade, low food miles, and free range much higher in my priorities. I do buy organic quite often, though, and I'm not to going to stop. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the organic farming practices are better for the environment, and long term sustainability. I'm not convinced by all of the methods - old and traditional isn't automatically better. For example, what's with copper sulphate being considered organic? High school chemistry should tell you that it's an inorganic compound. It was my favourite in my chemistry set - such a pretty blue. I'm not saying it's actually bad or good; I am completely ignorant on this topic. It just makes me go "huh?"

I am also fairly sure that some of the "heritage" varieties of plants are better for you than the modern breeds - another question not addressed by these studies. We humans have been busily breeding our foods to be sweeter and fatter for millennia. We've changed that in the last century to selecting easier to transport and store, and lower in fat. But some of those bitter and sulphury compounds are the ones that are good for us; and the less intensively bred variants tend to be much higher in antioxidants and other nutrients. Australian bush foods are a prime example - super high in various nutrient levels, they are surely bound to one of the next faddy "superfoods". Oat bran, wild blueberries, wheatgrass, gojiberries, pomegranates... How about Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, akudjura or finger lime? Ooh, look, Kakadu Juice! Sounds good - get in early and beat the trendy price rises!

But these points are not at all what is addressed by the studies, and no amount of yelling "look, over there!" forms any kind of rebuttal. I really love how Goldacre phrased it; I could not imagine writing it better.

The emotive commentary in favour of organic farming bundles together diverse and legitimate concerns about unchecked capitalism in our food supply: battery farming, corruptible regulators, or reckless destruction of the environment, where the producer’s costs do not reflect the true full costs of their activities to society, to name just a few. Each of these problems deserve individual attention.

But just as we do not solve the problems of deceitfulness in the pharmaceutical industry by buying homeopathic sugar pills, so we may not resolve the undoubted problems of unchecked capitalism in industrial food production by giving money to the £2bn industry represented by the Soil Association.

So - what's up with Michael Pollan, our ethical foodie hero? Plain old unthinking sexism is what. His latest column on the merits of home cooking is mostly pretty good. But he blindly assumes that cooking is women's work, and blames feminism for its decline. Read the Salon commentary here. And Pollan's NYTimes article here. ORLY, Michael? What, you maybe think men do not need to eat? Or do you think all men should come equipped with a personal chef as a birthright?

To be fair, he does actually think that men should learn to cook. Where he goes off the rails is in ascribing the downfall of home cooking to, of all things, feminism. It's as if Betty Friedan all by herself persuaded 1950s middle class housewives that they were unhappy. Because every educated woman before Friedan just LOVED being forced to quit her job to cook, clean and care for children and wait on her husband. The intellectual joys of scrubbing the kitchen floor were unquestionable until Evil Betty hypnotised us all! And working class women are just dumb, and were totally taken in by this. Instead of spending hours making casseroles, they chose to go and work for the money to feed and clothe and house their families. Imagine! How silly! They ate macaroni cheese from a box instead of making a proper boeuf bourgignon, and baking apple pies. What could they possibly have been thinking?

Actually, my bloke does have a personal chef (hi there!), and he is very happy about it by all accounts. But that's us individually. He trades cleaning duties for the shopping and cooking. He seriously hates shopping. Cooking is OK, though he's out of practice. He used to be quite good at whipping up a pasta dinner, and unlike me he actually got the knack of steaming rice on the stovetop. He's crap at BBQs, though, which has got to be bad for his Bloke cred.

Cooking can indeed be creative and fun - obviously it's one of my own joys. And I quite agree that a certain level of it is an essential life skill for all of us. Nobody should have to depend on fast food and microwaved readimeals. But ALL of us should have the basics, independent of our plumbing. The complexities may safely be left to those of us who enjoy it - also independent of our plumbing.

By the way, one thing I'm very glad to learn from this is that there's a film of Julia Child's life, mashed up with the Julie/Julia project, coming out soon. VERY EXCITED OMG WHEN IS IT OPENING HERE?!!! *Ahem* Sorry, getting carried away. VERY EXCITED VERY EXCITED VERY EXCITED! Australian release date 08-Oct-09, US release date 07-Aug-09 WTF? DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD. *oops, management does not endorse any naughty illegal stuff, treely ruly.*

Old Standards

I have not much to report, since I've been sick again. I sometimes think I should just hibernate until spring. Towards the end of the week I picked up, and I have done a little cooking of the easy kind. I made a chicken curry from paste, and a 3-tins dahl - though it was only one tin this time, as I had kidney beans and home roasted tomatoes and red capsicum in the freezer.

I also made some more muffins this morning - these ones are blackberry and lillipilli. I used the same recipe as for last week's cranberry and orange, except with blackberries swapped for cranberries, and a half jar of lillipilli jelly for the marmalade. And no orange flower water and sugar - the jelly is sweet enough for me. Though I did add sprinkle of cassia & sugar on top. Also, I left the oven on a sensible temperature, and they were nicely done in 20 minutes.

This dahl and the generic muffins are old standards that take very little thinking. The other old standard was the takeaway the bloke bought from the our favourite pide house, TurkOz in Dickson. Spinach and cheese, and lamb, tomato and capsicum pide, and also some bread and hummous. I used some of the bread to make cheese, chutney and parsley toasties. Lots of parsley. Parsley is high in vitamin C and iron, and it is too a salad vegetable!

Another Anzac Day, Another Batch of Biscuits

Saturday was of course the correct day, but today is the public holiday so I figure that if I make biscuits today it still counts. I'm using the same Anzac biscuit recipe as last year: an authentic one from the war memorial. The recipe makes about 3 dozen, assuming you use well-rounded teaspoons. I compress the mix into the bowl of the spoon with my hands. It's pretty dry and crumbly, but don't worry, it bakes up fine. And of course clean hands are a cook's most essential tool.

I rarely use dessicated coconut, so I was a bit worried that my stock might have gone rancid, but it smelled and tasted fine. It's safe to do a tiny taste test of potentially rancid nuts and oils - just nasty if it is actually off. And while it's not safe to consume a lot of them, it's more likely to give you cancer later in life than to kill you right off.

I didn't take a picture of these - it looks exactly the same as last year. Bickies: check, bag of oranges: check; funky but nasty blue tile benchtop: check. (Waiting for a quote to fix that last point.)

On a more serious note, the Bloke reminded me of Kemal Ataturk's words on the ANZACS. Another good thing about ANZAC day is that the enemy our troops fought is no longer our enemy. The tragic events have, oddly, forged bonds of friendship between the nations.

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well."

BBQ Lamb a la Wog

In a hat tip to Australia day, and the forthcoming Canberra multi-cultural festival, I present you with this recipe in honour of our immigrant communities, and our sheep. In titling this post, I trust that years of "Wogs out of Work" and other comedians have sufficiently moved this epithet away from insult to a joke that a Skip may use.

So, anyway, roasting lamb is fine and good, but a roast dinner is a bit heavy for this weather. BBQ lamb and salad is the ticket - and it's really very easy. I bought a pre-made one from Meatways a while ago, and that inspired me to make my own. The salad in the picture is a random assembly from what salad fixings I found in the fridge - baby spinach, cucumber, tomato, avocado, olives. But to keep it in theme it was dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Recipe: BBQ lamb with lemon and herbs
1 small leg of lamb, butterflied. (About 1.2kg)
3 large lemons
6 medium cloves garlic
2 tablespoons fruity extra virgin olive oil
a loose half cup of chopped fresh herbs: parsley, oregano and a bit of basil.

Zest 2 of the lemons thoroughly, or three half-arsedly.
Juice the lemons, and crush the garlic
Mix everything except the lamb together.
Remove any large obvious chunks of fat and tendon from the lamb.
Place in a non-reactive container, and pour over the marinade mix.
Smoosh it around to coat, and leave for at least 3 and up to 36 hours. Turn it over occasionally.
When ready to cook, heat BBQ to a medium low flame.
Scrape off most of the herbs, and plonk the lamb on the BBQ, and leave it alone for ten minutes.
Turn it over and drizzle with some of the liquid from the marinade, or a bit of extra oil & lemon.
Leave to cook the other side - 5 minutes is enough for rare; up to 15 minutes for well-done.
Remove from heat, wrap in foil and leave in a warm place to rest for at least 15 minutes.
Slice across the grain. Serve as a pile of slices, not a big chunk.

Notes: A Greek salad would be the perfect accompaniment, of course.

We had part of this one night, cooked on the cast iron grill inside, with salad, pita bread and a dollop of bought hommous. And I took the rest to a BBQ on Friday, where our host and fellow guests added BBQ corn and asparagus, a sweet potato and chickpea salad, and a carrot and zucchini salad. And some other meats. All good stuff. I drank a few too many purple champagnes, though.

Classic Roast Chook with Stuffing and Gravy

I missed a small but very important part of Xmas this year: the stuffing and gravy. I really love a roast turkey with stuffing and gravy. I almost share my mother's position on this, which is that the turkey is mostly relevant for providing the raw material and excuse for stuffing and gravy.

I seriously thought about buying a turkey, so that I could do it anyway. But there are only two of us, and the only ones I've seen on special so far are those "self-basting" ones with the weird butter-flavoured grease injections. I have instead got a proper chicken - a 1.9kg free range beast from Lilydale poultry. So I'm going to have my roast with stuffing and gravy anyway. Chicken used to be a Christmas treat, back before the factory farming methods made them cheap and relatively tasteless.

The gravy is a bit make-do, since there were no giblets or neck with the chicken. I've simmered a common stock cube with some carrot, celery, herbs and leftover flat champagne to get the liquid. The stuffing is a classic with a twist: I've used native pepper instead of the usual black pepper. I've just got roast baby potatoes and steamed green beans to go with it. Nothing fancy, just a pure classic. I even looked up the cooking time in an old Margaret Fulton book.

Recipes follow.

Recipe 1: Sage & Onion Stuffing
6 slices wholegrain bread
1 medium onion
50g butter
1 teaspoon native pepper berries
1 tablespoon shredded fresh sage leaves
Remove the crusts from the bread, and tear up into very small pieces.
Crush the pepper berries in a mortar and pestle.
Mix pepper and sage into breadcrumbs.
Slice the onion into small dice and fry gently in the butter until translucent and starting to turn golden.
Tip onion and butter into the bread crumbs, and mix well.
Stuff into the chicken.

Notes: You can use a food processor to crumb the bread if you like. It's also easier to do by hand if it's a bit stale - leave the bread out of its plastic bag overnight, for instance, or let it sit in the warming oven for 10 minutes.

Recipe 2: Roast chicken
Umm, really? A recipe? Bung chook in oven. Keep moist somehow. Add flavours if you want. Cook until done. High or low, either can work. OK, seriously, here we go.

1 chicken

Wash chicken inside and out, remove fat from vent area, and stuff if desired. Place chicken in a flame-proof baking dish, with a little oil underneath to prevent sticking. Spray a little oil on the breast, and drape foil over the top. Bake at 200C for 20 minutes, then lower to 180C for a further 25 minutes per 500g weight. Baste with pan juices and a little white wine about every 20 minutes. Remove foil for last 20 minutes to brown.

The chicken is done when it's at about 80C on a meat thermometer, or leg and thigh can be easily wobbled about and torn off, or the juices from the thigh run clear, and not pink, when it's pierced with a skewer. Rest, covered with foil, for 15 minutes before carving.

Notes: Oh, look, there are about ten billion variations here. Stuff with lemon and herbs. Cook slower or faster. Cook on a rack. Stuff tarragon butter under the skin. Drape breast with bacon instead of foil. Use a spice rub. The flame-proof roasting pan is necessary if you're making gravy, otherwise you could easily use a glass dish. This oven temperature is NOT for a fan-forced oven. My fan element is broken, as you might recall.




Recipe 3: Old-fashioned Gravy
The roasting pan and its juices
1 1/2 tablespoons plain flour
2 cups stock, mixed with white wine if you want
Gravy browning
While the chicken is resting, make gravy. Strain juices from the pan into a fat separator, or just remove excess fat with a spoon. Save a couple of tablespoons of the fat. Put the pan over the heat and stir the flour into the reserved fat and juices, to make a roux. Add hot stock gradually, stirring well. If it goes lumpy, just use a whisk. Bring to a simmer to cook the flour and thicken the gravy. Add gravy browning if you like a darker colour.

Notes: Gravy browning is also called Parisienne Essence, and it's basically a dark colour made from caramel. You could use a bit of worcestershire or soy sauce instead, for a dash more flavour. Mine was dark enough anyway, this time.

I Get Perks!

I went to the Canberra Times Food & Wine section Xmas drinks last night, and came home with a couple of cookbooks. We had a few drinks and nibbles at the Parlour Wine Rooms, a door prize raffle for a hamper, and we were allowed to grab a book each from the review stash. I was just going to have the one, but Robbie from Lynwood Cafe, who won the hamper, thrust the one she'd been holding on me at the last moment and I couldn't possibly refuse! My protests were exceptionally feeble.

I have ended up with Christine Manfield's Stir, which is a moderately practical volume. She gives recipes for a number of spice pastes and for each one, a small collection of recipes using that paste. I hope to actually try some of those out.

The other book is the huge, heavy and ornamental tome Alinea, by chef Grant Achatz. There's introductory chapters by a number of people, including Jeffey Steingarten. It's a cookbook from the Alinea retaurant in Chicago. There's a website just for the book, which gives an idea of how beautiful it is. And probably hints at how difficult and flat out impractical it is for a home cook. This is cuisine as high art, with prices to match - the shorter tasting menu is a mere $145 US per head, and that's without wine. Or hey, you can buy a gift certificate for a friend: it's a mere $US 1050 for a complete dinner for two including 25 course meal, wine, taxes and service.

The book features complete recipes for four 20-30 course meals, one for each season. They're listed very simply, main ingredient first, then a list of other ingredients or a technique. For example from the summer menu we have: "CORN, coconut, cayenne, mint", "RHUBARB, seven different textures", or curiously, from spring there's an Australian theme: "LAMB, akudjura, olive, eucalyptus veil".

So what if you were going to make something from this book? You'd need some equipment and special ingredients, but you could do a fair bit at home. There's a whole chapter with advice on adapting the ideas. You can make you own "anti-grill", for instance, by buying a slab of dry ice and putting it under a metal baking sheet. Agar agar is widely available from any Asian grocer, carrageenan is sometimes found in health food stores, and some of the highly specialised starches can be mail ordered. A home dehydrator is not hard to buy.

But even the simplest dishes involve many complex operations and assemblies. For example, take that RHUBARB one. Guess how many sub-recipes there are for that dish! Try the LAMB or CORN, too. Then click on the link to find out:

There are thirteen of them in RHUBARB. CORN is remarkable at only three, and LAMB has five. RHUBARB is slightly exceptional, but many have five or eight. Here's the list of sub-recipes in the RHUBARB dish.

1 * Beet spheres - sweetened beetroot juice made into little frozen-shelled spheres with a liquid centre.
2 * Rhubarb juice - with sugar, cooked & strained.
3 * Dried rhubarb - a puree with wine & Thai pepper, rolled to a sheet and dessicated
4 * Gin compressed rhubarb - raw, but sweet. Macerated in juniper & gin syrup under vacuum.
5 * Rhubarb sponge on bayleaf - not a cake, a foam made by whipping rhubarb jelly. Decorate with dessicated grapefruit.
6 * Lavender-poached rhubarb - wine & lavender syrup poached.
7 * Lavender pudding - a lavender agar gel pureed to a custard-pudding texture
8 * Goat's milk custard - made with lavender and rhubarb, set with carrageenan
9 * Rhubarb sorbet - a straightforward sorbet.
10 * Oatmeal struesel - a simple topping of oats toasted with brown sugar, then blended with cream to a smooth icecream.
11 * Rhubarb gelee - or jelly, to us. Set the juice (above) with gelatin
12 * Fennel Candy - a toffee flavoured with fennel juice
13 * Green tea nage - a sauce of green tea, sugar and salt emulsified with soy lecithin

And finally the assembly step, which I didn't count a a recipe, although it is very detailed about the exact plating and adds some garnishes.

Just the thing for your next dinner party, eh? No, I don't think so either. But some of it is possible: lavender poached rhubarb, with a rhubarb sorbet and oat crumble icecream terrine - that's quite do-able. I'm oscillating between appalled and inspired.

Wildlife Sightings

Look what the cats dragged in! It seemed totally unhurt, so I passed up the opportunity to eat lizard and released it in the garden. I didn't get a decent photo of the blue tongue, but I do have a badly blurred one showing the colour.


And we have a possum hiding in the shed. I don't know how we're going to get it out; it's up high near the ceiling and currently is settled in for a nice nap. Perhaps a few flash photos and loud music and a gentle poking with sticks might dissuade it. Yelling "possum pie" at it seems to have no effect :)

Podfood and other Sunday Things

Belinda and I had breakfast at the famous Podfood in Pialligo at the most unreasonable hour, for a Sunday, of 10.15 am. This was the latest they'd take a breakfast booking, though, and I really wanted to check it out, so we dragged ourselves out of bed and staggered off in the rain. Weekend brunches ought not to finish so early, it's just uncivilised.

Well, I was disappointed. I've been wanting to go there for a nice fancy lunch sometime, or to do some of their Thursday night cooking classes, but now I'm not so sure. I know the weather was a bit miserable, so we couldn't sit outside and enjoy the garden. But inside was very loud, and the service was a bit off - they forgot our second coffee order. And guys, seriously, the disabled toilet has all that space on the floor for *wheelchairs*, not for extra storage space.

Not happy, Jan. The food was very pretty and not too highly priced for breakfast - with the Sunday surcharge it was just under $50 for the two of us. That covered two coffees and a French Toast apiece, plus one fresh OJ. The coffee was quite good, though why don't they have a mug size? The breakfast was well below what I'd expected. The berries were frozen, not fresh, which is fair enough - but some were still icy inside. And the French toast was only coated, not soaked through, in its egg and milk mix. Luckily they made it on fresh French bread, not stale as is more traditional. At least that meant it was soft textured where there was plain bread inside. Belinda even complained about it when we were asked how things were, and it did no good in the way of apology or discount. So, we're probably not going back there now.

The rest of the day was much better. After breakfast we wandered through the adjacent gallery, admiring especially the magpie exhibition room with the wonderful 3-D patchwork sculpture magpies. Belinda wants a lovely cat picture, surprise, surprise. We also popped into one of the nurseries, I forget which now, and I bought some cat-safe snailbait, and seedlings of jalapeno chilli and vietnamese mint. It was too cold and damp to work in the garden, so they're on my kitchen bench waiting to go in later.

After that, I started off making a curry for tonight and later in the week. It's a beef rogan josh, made with blade steak, and a bush tomato spice blend that I picked up in Cairns. I've added some native pepper to keep up the theme, but I'm not sure it's that noticeable. I also got a dhal panchporan mostly done, just ready for its topping to be made tonight. This time I roasted the garlic and onion along with the tomatoes - a good idea, that was, I'll do it again.

Later in the afternoon, the bloke and I spent a couple of hours over at Olims, in the rather sad sports bar area, listening to blues guitarist Owen Campbell. I first heard of Owen when he was busking outside Dickson Woollies a couple of years ago, and have been idly following him since. This time he was on a double bill with his Dad, Satch. Satch plays more folk than blues, in the Dylan and Pogues line, which he sings in a lovely Scottish accent. I enjoyed Satch's set, and I love Owen's slide guitar, but I didn't enjoy the bit of country banjo-pluckin' stuff that they did together. Well executed, but not at all my cup of tea.

Then I had a quiet evening at home while the bloke went off to catch up with another blues band and a friend at the OCI. I took the chance to make myself a simple pasta dinner of bloke-hated food: tuna, sweetcorn and asparagus. And also bloke-approved items like chilli and baby peas and too much cheese. Yummy. I had more of that for lunch today.

Oh, one final note. Sadly for alphabet fans, I have completely failed to make it to anywhere starting with G in the last week. Will try harder.

Saturday Food Binge

It was a big day yesterday. I went to the market and the supermarket; I cleaned out the fridge; I planted tomatoes; I cooked a lot of things. And I wrote two blog posts. Yes, two. I'm cunningly phrasing this as if I were in the future, and setting it to autopublish on Sunday. Woooh, spooky.

Things I made yesterday:
* roasted rhubarb
* roast tomatoes
* fruit salad
* bacon bits, croutons, poached eggs, caesar-ish salad
* granola
* wattleseed pavlova base

A proper recipe and some general chatty how to stuff follows. Basically everything is either just chopped up and assembled as is, or baked in the oven.


The granola comes from Nigella Lawson's Feast. I've made it several times before. Last time I see was February; this one was more faithful to the recipe, though I still made a couple of substitutions. I swapped golden syrup for the rice malt syrup - some insect got into my rice malt syrup and died, so I had to toss it. And I swapped dark brown sugar for light, and I'm using dried blueberries and craisins instead of the raisins.

Caesar salad: well, there are classic versions, and there are variants. Mine was a variant. It's basically the most unhealthy salad you can imagine. Bacon, egg, anchovy and cheese with croutons and a creamy dressing. Oh, and cos lettuce, just so you can pretend it's a bit healthy. I made a slightly healthier variant by making my own bacon bits and croutons - oven roast rather than fried, and with the fat drained off the bacon. Add a poached egg, and a sprinkle of parmesan, and some anchovies for me but not the Bloke. Finally, I made up a random dressing by lightening some mayo with lime juice.

Roast tomatoes and roast rhubarb are simple things. They just get bunged into an oven and left until they look ready - slow or fast, it doesn't matter as long as you watch carefully. Slow is better if you can. Wash the rhubarb well and slice it up, pop into a pie plate so it's just one layer. Sprinkle over vanilla sugar generously, and roast until soft. Yum. I didn't weigh anything, but sugar really is a matter of taste.

The fruit salad was originally a bad melon. Not off, of course, but I had another flavourless early rockmelon. I thought that chopping it up and mixing it with tinned passionfruit, nata de coco, and a small pineapple would improve things. And it has. Some slivers of glace ginger went in, too. It's turned into a decent dessert, with some icecream. Or breakfast, with yoghurt and granola.

Recipe: Wattleseed Pavlova Base
4 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup caster sugar
1.5 tablespoons ground wattleseed

Whisk egg whites to a light froth.
Slowly add caster sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.
Add cream of tartar after about half the sugar is in.
Whisk until eggwhite forms stiff peaks.
Fold in wattleseed.
Line a 24cm cake tin with baking paper, and pour in meringue mix.
Use a spatula to scrape out the whisking bowl, and smooth the surface.
Bake at 140 for 1.5 hours, and let cool in oven.

To assemble pavlova, simply layer on whipped cream and strawberries. Don't worry if the top cracks, no-one will know. You could put some wattleseed in the cream, too if you like.

The pavlova is for Tuesday - we're having a Silly Hat Day BBQ, which now seems to be getting a bit out of hand. Salads for 15? Eek! There's some horse race on in Melbourne, too.

Finger Lime Tart and non-recipe cooking

Saturday morning found me on the road to Bungendore again, off to another native foods cooking class at Le Tres Bon. This week's theme was native limes. Julianne and Anthony supplied a big box of finger limes for us to cook with, and we also saw some of the small desert limes and plants. The fruit ripens in late summer and autumn. But the limes freeze well, and we were using defrosted ones.

We made a vinaigrette, the tart, and an icecream base for gin and finger lime icecream. The vinaigrette was actually a perfect example of my non-recipe cooking. We each had a small jar, and selected from the range of vinegars and oils and herbs to make our own to taste. Mine came out very sharp (as I like it), and beautifully pink, with both the lime and native pepper contributing colour. Belinda's was more mellow, and brown, with a rich lemon aspen infused balsamic vinegar doing the colour. We ate them on a prawn and mesclun salad, and had some left over to take home. They were all good in their own ways. I'll put my recipe later on.

The tart and icecream are recipe material, and we got to eat ones that Julianne and Anthony had prepared earlier, and take ours home. With the tarts, the balance of filling to case wasn't quite right with the ones we made - as you can see, it's a bit shallow. But they are very, very delicious. Fi & I were simply forced to lick out our bowls and beaters, because you couldn't possibly waste any. The icecream wasn't as successful as the wattleseed variant - the little caviar pearls of the lime freeze solid, so you don't get the nice flavour burst. Tart recipe below the fold; I won't bother with the icecream.

For the rest of the weekend it's been non-recipe cooking. A big pot of chilli is simmering away for the week, and we've had chicken sorta-cacciatore, pizzas, and BLTs.

The BLTs were tonight - just simple sandwiches, so we'd have room for dessert. The bacon was from the Bungendore Food Lovers Deli, where the owner salt-cures his own ham and bacon from the local free range pigs. Good stuff. The pizzas were made at a friend's farewell party - he's moving to Melbourne. We assembled our pizzas on individual bases and shoving them in the oven, two at a time. With only about a dozen people this is fun; nobody has to wait terribly long. The pizzas only take 10 minutes and you can assemble, chat, drink, and generally hang about the kitchen. I put lots of anchovy on mine so nobody would steal it...

The other two no-recipe meals are the chilli and the chicken sorta-cacciatore. I don't bother with weights and measures and details - it will all work, even if it's never exactly reproducible.

For the chicken, I browned an onion and some garlic, tossed in strips of chicken breast and browned them too. Then I chopped up and added 5 fresh tomatoes, and a red and green capsicum, and some oregano and bay leaves from the garden. Add a dash of brandy, simmer for half an hour and serve with pasta and a green veg - asparagus and broccolini this time. I used fresh tomatoes because they needed using up. A tin would be fine. Mushrooms would be nice. Fresh basil would be good. White wine, maybe. It's a "whatever" dish.

Chilli is similar. I do follow recipes for particular variants, but as a generic no-recipe meal it works, too. I soaked and boiled some kidney beans - but a large tin, drained and rinsed, could do. I fried up onion, garlic, mushrooms, zucchini and minced beef - but kangaroo or even no meat at all is fine. And different veggies can go in - eggplant, perhaps, or corn. Add some tomato - a huge tin, or fresh ones, and some tomato paste, or tomato juice, or passata. Add herbs and spices - cumin and chilli are essential; maybe oregano, coriander seed, pepper, and even a dash of cocoa and cinnamon. Simmer it all together for a couple of hours; leave overnight to let flavours meld in. Add salt to taste at the end. It's very hard to go wrong. Though do remember you can't take chilli out, so add judiciously and taste as you go.

And now, as promised, the finger lime recipes. To prepare finger limes, slice them in half down the length. Use a teaspoon to scrape all the tiny "caviar" out. Remove any seeds once it's scraped out; it's easier than trying to get them out of the fruit. There will be a little juice, toss that into your mix, too. Discard the rinds. Actually, it seems quite tempting to try candying them, since the fruit is such a rarity at the moment. But we didn't. Maybe another time.

Recipe 1: Finger Lime Vinaigrette
2 tablespoons macadamia oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon ground native pepper
"caviar" of 1 large finger lime
tiny pinch of sea salt
Put all in a small jar and shake madly.

Notes: use a different oil:vinegar ratio if you prefer. I have a strong taste for acid, more than most people. And hey, look at that colour! That's basically from the pepper. The fruit colour is actually variable from very pale ice pink to a deep raspberry shade.

Recipe 2: Finger Lime Tart Filling
Pulp of 4 large finger limes
1/3 lemon juice
3 eggs
3/4 cup caster sugar
50g unsalted butter
Put eggs and sugar in a metal bowl that will fit over a saucepan. Mix well, then whisk in lemon juice.

Put basin over saucepan of simmering water, and whisk continually until it is very pale and thickened - around ten minutes. It should almost double in volume. Stir through chopped butter, and when it is melted in, fold in the finger lime pulp. Set aside for ten minutes to cool slightly.

Fill a pre-baked pastry shell (about 20cm) with the mixture, and refrigerate for several hours. It will set more firmly.

Notes: we used a sweet shortcrust made with self-raising flour, but you could use any sweet or plain short pastry, even bought pastry.

The filling is a sabayon, and it's a little sensitive. Keep whisking pretty steadily; it's important for it not too heat up too much or the eggs will get grainy and scrambled. Take it off the heat for a minute or two if you're worried.

B is for Bungendore: a cooking class

Yesterday I spent the morning in Bungendore, which I will claim as B for my Canberra alphabet. It's only 20 minutes drive from my house - the same as Mawson - and it's a pleasant spot to visit. There's bookshops, antique shops, cafes, pubs, restaurants, and even some good food shops. The woodworks gallery and cafe is a favourite for breakfast, and for the amazing craftsmanship. When I win Lotto I will furnish my house from there. (Must buy a ticket one day. Or not, the odds are much the same.)

This time I was mostly up the back of Le Tres Bon, making wattleseed pasta, icecream and meringues with my friend Fi. She is a big bushfood enthusiast who writes the insufficiently updated Eat Australia. I gather she's been busy collecting chooks and digging gardens and training dogs and otherwise having a life instead of writing.

The cooking classes we're attending are not the ones run by Christophe himself, who is off in France at the moment. While he's away, Julianne and Anthony Cowley are teaching about bushfoods. They are a Canberra couple with a large bushfood garden, which they have on occasion opened to the public. I think I missed one showing this year. Julianne is an enthusiastic cook, and watching her knead pasta dough and prepare it is a delight. That unfussed smooth action must have taken her a lot of practice to develop.

I'm no dab hand with pasta, nor is Fi - her bloke is, though, by all accounts. We managed to produce some decent fettucini anyway, though with much less flair and panache, and much more overworking and compromise. Actually, we really didn't do ourselves proud at all: our meringues inexplicably failed to puff up and rise. Not my greatest moment. I had thought that if you got your egg whites safely to the firm peak stage that the rise was inescapable, but apparently not! Usually I use electric beaters, though, and hand whisking is clearly *not* better. Yay, technology!

Oh well. We had a lovely lunch of wattleseed pasta with a simple tomato sauce, followed by wattleseed icecream with a chocolate dipped wattleseed meringue, and wattlecino coffee. And we had leftovers to take home. Fi's & my skinny unrisen meringues actually taste excellent: a good strong flavour rush. I had a couple after dinner last night.

I wanted to pick up some of the wonderful ham from Food Lovers on my way home, but they had sold out. Fortunately I'm going to the next class in two weeks, so I've ordered some. Until then, I'll have to content myself with a garlic and rosemary rubbed leg of saltbush lamb, a couple of organic sirloin steaks and a pair of organic chicken breasts. I haven't decided on an exact menu for the week, but a Sunday roast lamb is always attractive.

Last night I used some of the chicken with a mango and native mint marinade from Outback Spirit. Served with oven chips from a packet, fresh steamed green beans and a simple mango salsa that was just half a Kensington pride mango, chopped with a fresh jalapeno and a couple of slices of red onion. Very yummy, though a bit expensive this early in mango season - I got two at $3.75 each, but I do love them.

The Australian Omnivore's List

In a follow up to the Omnivore's list, the author has made a statement about his reasons. My friend Alex has also contacted me to let me know that I have actually eaten kaolin- it's a smoothing ingredient used in several food products, including Haigh's chocolates. Mmmm, clay... I'm not totally averse to the idea - if you're going to eat any kind of dirt, surely it must be the finest, whitest, purest clay! Actually it's technically a mineral, like salt but more complex. Whatever.

I was also inspired by the Omnivore's Hundred, and I'm making up an Australian list. Here's my first hack at it - I invite comments and suggestions. (Fiona: this is your cue!) I've tried for a mix of native produce, classics from the early European settlers, and the most iconic junk foods. I've deliberately left off the major contributions from more recent immigrants; an expanded list would have to have laksa and pho and kebabs and many more good things.


1 Macadamia Nuts
2 Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey
3 Single species eucalyptus honey
4 Rosella flower champagne cocktail
5 Lillipilli/Riberry fruit
6 Quandongs
7 Bush tomatoes/Akudjura
8 Warrigal greens
9 Midyim berries
10 Bunya nut bread or dumplings
11 Wattleseed
12 Lemon myrtle
13 Tasmanian pepper berry
14 Murray River pink salt
15 Kangaroo
16 Emu
17 Wild Barramundi
18 Crocodile
19 Possum
20 Goanna
21 Witjuti Grub (Widjuti/Witchetty)
22 Bogong moth
23 Sugar ants
24 Meat pie
24 Pie floater
26 Lamington
27 Pavlova (shut up, NZers)
28 Damper with golden syrup
29 Vegemite sandwich
30 Anzac biscuit
31 Roast leg of lamb
32 BBQ steak (as in cooked on a BBQ grill, not American BBQ)
33 Fundraising sausage sizzle whitebread sanger
34 Australian grown coffee
35 Bundy Rum
36 Coopers ale
37 Mass market lager, such as Tooheys, VB, XXXX or Swan
38 Passiona
39 Bundaberg ginger beer
40 Grange hermitage
41 Tim tam
42 Violet crumble
43 Fairy bread
44 Lemon delicious pudding
45 Australian grown tea
46 Vanilla slice
47 Frog cake
48 Musk stick
49 Pumpkin scone
50 Pink iced finger bun

Take a point off for a shrimp on the barbie. (Prawns are OK, though.)
Take five points off for a bloomin' onion from Outback Steakhouse. Bizarrely, this American chain has recently opened some franchises in Australia, so you can enjoy your American style pseudo-Australian food without even leaving the country!

I score 44/50 on my current list. No Grange, no pie floater, no insects, no goanna. When I ate possum it was actually imported from New Zealand, so no protected species were killed to make my list! I'm already thinking I've missed important stuff - my first afterthought was Sydney rock oysters. And maybe Tasmanian whisky. If enough feedback or afterthoughts come my way, I'll do a revision.

My Cafe and Lyneham Pide Hut

The lack of cooking continues, but of course we still have to eat. The cauliflower & macaroni cheese did for two nights, and for two other nights we've had Turkish pide. The pide came about because we were having evening visitors. With me being rather out of commission, and Belinda madly packing for the three month grand tour, we asked Beth to bring the food. We supplied money, drinks, and dishwasher loading.

Beth bought our dinner at the Lyneham Pide Hut. It wasn't bad at all. I enjoyed the very fresh warm Turkish bread, and a good Cacik dip - that's Turkish tzatziki. The zucchini balls were nicely done, still crisp on the outside and cooked through. This matters - if you're a fan of these fritters you'll know that it's common to get them a bit raw in the middle.

We had four pides, two vego and two meat, and they were OK. The mushroom pide had the best filling, including some good black olives; the lamb and mixed vegetable were OK, but the pastrimali seemed slightly wrong. Not that it was off, just perhaps a tiny bit oxidised as if the meat had been sitting around uncovered too long. It's not the best pide ever - I prefer the pide from Dickson, which comes up fluffier and fatter and cheesier - but it's quite respectable. We fed six people dinner, and had to my estimate at least four more meals in leftovers, at a cost of $95 all up. Good value takeaway; we were happy with it.

In a separate event, I had afternoon tea at My Cafe in Manuka on Sunday. I wanted to write this up as a Find column, but it really wasn't good enough for that. I'm very taken by the concept of their lillipilli pikelets and wattlecino. Australian flavours are not used enough, and I was all set to encourage this with a column about "Aussie Arvo Tea" in the Canberra Times. If you have a podium, use it, I say!

Anyway, it wasn't so good. The service was fine, the menu is good, the buzz is good, and there are plenty of outdoor heaters. Belinda thought her French toast with banana and bacon was one of the better examples of its kind. And it's great that they serve breakfast until 5pm.

My wattlecino ($5.40) came in a mug, and was too weakly flavoured. I remember having it before, last year sometime, and it came in a cup, and that was fine. The lillipilli pikelets ($12ish) come in a big stack of six fat pikelets, and the mixed spicy apply berry flavour is good. They were a bit dry and tough around the edges, probably from reheating. I recalled that they had actual berry chunks in them, but these ones were even and devoid of fruit. Perhaps made with lillipilli jelly in the batter? It's served with a berry compote, and although it was winter this was served cold. An unfortunate choice - but even worse, some were still frozen in the middle. I can't in all conscience recommend it other than as a curiosity. Excellent idea, but needs work.

But hey, try it at home! To make wattlecino you need an espresso machine, and wattleseed. It's not cheap, but you could try variations like adding some to plunger coffee, or perhaps infusing in milk before straining it off to make hot chocolate. The seed is a bit gritty in texture to just add to milk as is. And if you can't find lillipillies, you can buy a jar of lillipilli conserve online. Sometimes the Essential Ingredient has them frozen, and quite a lot of gourmet food shops will have the preserve. I got some from a woman who makes her own, and sells it at the Bungendore market. Lillipillies are also known as riberries. Technically I think there's many varieties of lillipilli and the riberry is only one of them, but if you're food shopping rather than gardening that won't matter.

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Dinner on Fiona's Farm

My friend Fiona has a property outside Tarago, which really isn't actually a farm, but a lot of bushland with house, garden and dams. We had a lovely dinner out there last night - Fiona made a slow roast leg of goat, with Moroccan spices, quite heavy on the cinnamon. It came out very tender, falling off the bone. We ate it with potatoes from her garden, fresh local corn, and a spicy carrot salad. Then in the morning we had pancakes, made bright yellow with eggs from the chickens who were scratching up the garden.

My contribution was a rustic apple cake for dessert. It's a Nigella Lawson recipe, from her Domestic Goddess book, and which was featured in the Canberra Times last Wednesday. I had all the ingredients on hand, especially the apples. These were a half dozen red delicious that I bought down the coast last week. I was optimistically thinking that as they were in season, glorious dark red, and unwaxed, they might be good. Disappointingly, they were terrible - floury tasteless rubbish. But even bad apples come good enough when cooked.

Recipe follows.
Recipe: Apple and Walnut Cake
100g raisins
75ml apple schnapps
150ml walnut oil
200g caster sugar
2 large eggs
350g self raising flour, sifted
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon myrtle
450g apples
100g walnuts
Cover the raisins with boiling water for a couple of minutes, then pour off and add the schnapps.
Peel, core and chop the apples. You want 450g prepared weight, after discarding the trimmings.
Beat oil and sugar well, and add eggs one at a time, whisking until it is mayonnaise like in texture. A stand mixer is useful here.
Fold in the dry ingredients, then add the apples, walnuts, raisins, and any of their remaining soaking liquid.
Dump the batter into a well-greased 20cm springform tin, and smooth the top.
Bake at 180C for 45mins-1 hour, until top is golden and a test skewer comes out clean. Pop some foil on top if it seems to be browning too quickly.
Leave in the tin for ten minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool.


Notes: Nigella's recipe uses 1 tsp cinnamon and the zest of a lemon; while I swapped in the cinnamon myrtle. Also she suggests rum where I used apple schnapps, and sultanas instead of raisins. According to the Canberra Times writer, other oils and nuts may be successfully substituted. And it's OK if the apples are partly precooked, too.

The batter really is quite thick, and it will not come out perfectly smooth on top unless you work harder on smoothing it than I did. It is beautifully moist, with the oil and fruit, and even better after a day's rest.

ANZAC biscuits

Because it's ANZAC day and you have to. It is your patriotic duty to eat biscuits, possibly with a nice cuppa tea. Also, to drink a lot of beer. I missed that bit, but the bloke did his part on that score.

ANZAC day is a funny thing. When I was at uni, it wasn't much celebrated, and the political crowd saw it as glorifying war. We occasionally protested, even. But it has changed over the decades, and seems to have been eagerly adopted by backpacking youth. Gallipoli would have been packed this morning. I'm in a small way quite pleased about this. As a nation, we have chosen to have a war memorial date that is not commemorating a victory, rah rah yay for us. The poor bastards who got dumped on that beach suffered actual bloody disaster; it was a catastrophic incompetent fuckup. This seems a much more suitable way to think about war.

Anyway, I grabbed my recipe from the War Memorial. It's pretty simple, here it is almost as they publish it, with a little metrification. For any stray American readers, these are sort of kind of a bit like oatmeal cookies. Historically they could be sent in the post, by ship, from Australia to Europe, and still remain edible.

Ingredients
* 1 cup each of plain flour, sugar, rolled oats, and dessicated coconut
* 125g butter
* 1 tbls golden syrup
* 2 tbls boiling water
* 1 tsp bicarbonate soda (add a little more water if mixture is too dry)

Method
1. Grease biscuit tray and pre-heat oven to 180°C.
2. Combine dry ingredients.
3. Melt together butter and golden syrup. Combine water and bicarbonate soda, and add to butter mixture.
4. Mix butter mixture and dry ingredients.
5. Drop teaspoons of mixture onto tray, allowing room for spreading.
6. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool on tray for a few minutes before transferring to cooling racks.

Source
Recipes taken from Robin McLachlan, Anthea Bundock, Marie Wood, Discovering Gallipoli: research guide (Bathurst, NSW: Times Past Productions for the Australian War Memorial, 1990)

Notes: Be careful when mixing the carb soda into the sugar & butter; it foams up a lot. I use silicon or baking paper sheets to avoid greasing the biscuit tray. Also, I tried adding some cinnamon myrtle this time, but it doesn't seem to have had a noticeable effect. It's really mild compared to the punch of lemon myrtle - perhaps next year I'll do lemon anzacs.

PS: Oranges are yummy. I bought a bag. Did you see? A cut up orange is nice to have on the plate along with your ANZAC bickie.

Sorry

As just one Australian, I hereby add my voice to today's long overdue apology. Here's the ABC story. Well done, Kev.

Another Ham Recipe and a Roo Change

The ham's almost gone now, but it's still featuring in lunches and the occasional dinner recipe. On Sunday I made "Pasta Saltimbocca" - I invented this one, based on the idea of veal saltimbocca, with ham, sage and mushrooms. I had green salad makings and mushrooms from the market, sage from my friend Helen, and you know where the ham was from.

Then yesterday I made a kangaroo keema. I use a keema recipe from Nigella's Feast as my basic, and vary around that. It's more a recovery dish than an actual feat dish - good for the day after the big night. Hers is a very simple dish of lamb mince with peas. Mine had kangaroo mince and green beans. I feel a bit daft even giving a recipe for this - I'll probably never make this exactly the same way twice. I usually serve this as Nigella suggests: with flat bread, rather than rice. Last night we ate it with lebanese pita breads, some lime pickles and mango chutney, and a mango lassi.

Okonomiyaki tonight, I think.
Recipes follow.
Recipe 1: Pasta Saltimbocca
300g mushrooms, sliced
200g ham
1 large onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons chopped fresh sage leaves
2 tablespoons marsala
1/2 packet spaghetti or other pasta
First, put the pasta on. Soften the onion in the oil, add the garlic and mushrooms and saute gently for another five minutes or until mushrooms are well softened. When the pasta is nearly ready, add the ham, sage, and marsala, and stir well. Drain the pasta, then stir through the ham and mushroom mix. Serve with parmesan to taste, and a green salad.

Notes: this is a nice light meal. If you fancy a richer style, it can easily become a pseudo carbonara with an egg and some cream. Serves 2, with lots of leftovers for lunch.

Recipe 2: Kangaroo Keema
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons sunflower oil
1 teaspoon hot mustard oil
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 mild long green chillies, chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons garam masala
1/2 teaspoon dried lime powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 cup water
400g kangaroo mince
300g green beans, cut in short lengths to approximately pea size
3 tablespoons Bombay Sandwich Spread

Use a large shallowish saute pan, rather than a deep saucepan. Fry the chopped onion in the oils - be careful to keep the heat low, as mustard oil burns easily. When onion has softened, add the ginger and garlic, and let cook for another minute before adding the mince. Stir well to brown, then add chopped chilli, salt, spices, tomato paste, water and tomatoes. Cover, and let simmer for a couple of hours. 15 minutes before serving, add the green beans and the Bombay spread, turn up the heat, and remove the lid to reduce liquid while the beans cook.


Note: This is how I did it last night. But really it's more of a concept. Vary anything you like - spices, meat, vegetables... It likes a longer simmer, but 30 minutes will do. I usually use frozen peas, not beans. Bombay Sandwich Spread is a condiment from Indian grocers - it's a bright green mix of coriander, mint and who knows what. I have never used it in cooking before, but the normal recipe has a lot of fresh coriander, and I didn't have any. Dried lime powder or "loomi" is a middle eastern condiment made of dried limes. A squeeze of lime juice would also do fine.

Eating with the Gods, and native produce

The Gods Cafe at ANU, that is. It's attached to the ANU Arts Centre theatre, on the edge of Union Court. It's not a student cheapie, it's a quality cafe which just happens to be on campus. They've recently won an award for the best ACT cafe restaurant. I had lunch there yesterday, and breakfast today, and then spent the rest of the morning at a meeting, in which our morning tea and lunch were catered by them. Over the top? Well, no. Judy and Tony do great coffee, and delicious food, and I'd happily eat my way through their entire menu if I had the time and the cash. Not that it's hugely expensive - my salad lunch was $18 with a glass of Pinot Gris, and breakfast about $15 with a large coffee.

I managed to keep up my healthy eating plan without much trouble. For lunch, I had their house salad with home-cured salmon, asparagus and avocado. Breakfast was a big bowl of the house muesli, with a berry compote; lunch was chicken and rocket wraps with fresh fruit. Morning tea foiled my good intentions a bit - the mini berry pastries were light and crisp and delicious. My visiting friend, who also hosted the meeting is also a big fan of The Gods. She powered her way through a dish of mussels and a side salad of rocket and parmesan at lunch, and next day had a big eggs benedict style breakfast with salmon and spinach. It looked terrific, but it was too early in the morning for me to cope with that sort of thing. I was more tempted by the croissants, from the Cornucopia bakery, or the blueberry maple marscapone bruschetta, but I resisted.

I'm quite excited to have got some comments on my blog from people who I don't even know. Hello!

Mako asked about sourcing native Australian ingredients. I wish I had a really good supplier, but no. It's all here and there, and erratic. Spices are getting much easier these days - even Woolworths & Coles now have some. So does Oxfam, and there is a man at the Saturday morning EPIC markets who sells a wider variety of bush spices, including aniseed myrtle and native mint. The Essential Ingredient in Kingston sometimes stocks frozen produce. I've seen bunya nuts and riberries, as well as some of the Vic Cherikoff range. The dried quandongs mentioned in an earlier post came from the Port Douglas market, so that's not too easy to repeat. Ironbark cafe in Manuka might be good people to ask; they often have native fruit desserts. And then there's mail order from Vic Cherikoff. If anybody else has good sources, please add a comment - I'd love to hear about it.

My friend Fiona, at Eat Australia, is busy planting out warrigal greens and midyim berries. She's the only person who's ever supplied me with fresh ingredients. I'm wondering about planting my own warrigal greens - Fiona says they are almost unkillable, so that would suit my dreadfully lax gardening style. I have a very tiny garden by Canberra standards, but I am trying for just a few native food plants. My desert lime survived the winter, though my brush cherry died. Oh well. I might try again and actually water it this time...

Skippy from the vaults

There's not been much cooking going on since Friday, and won't be for a while. I'm still not too well, though I'm definitely better - enough that I'm going back to work tomorrow, but pretty low on energy. We've been eating the leftovers, with some extra frozen veggies. Now that they're gone, it's time to raid the freezer.

I've got some chilli con skippy out for tonight, with baked potatoes and salad. Back when I made the chilli, I set some of the mince and tomato mix aside before adding the spices and beans. I often do this - it can turn into many other meals with a few tweaks. This time I've added basil, oregano and red wine. Skippy bolognese for tomorrow, yum.

I've felt compelled to call kangaroo meat "skippy" ever since I heard some fool propose that we should rename it to "austral" to hide its origins for the squeamish. It didn't take, and now I can't even find this mentioned on google. Excellent. I'm all in favour of eating kangaroo - it's a native product, very low in fat, much better for our environment than beef, and as cruelty-free as a meat can get. There are no feedlots or abbattoirs; the animals must be killed in the wild by licensed shooters, who must adhere to humane standards. You can read the industry statement here.

After the roo, the plan is to go out for a nice curry dinner on Thursday. And then the bloke is off to a conference in Chicago, and I'm off for a couple of days holiday with the grrls in a health spa type place. Massages and bushwalks and getting wrapped up in mud and glad wrap, oh my! I've never done that before. After that, I'll have a week on my own before the bloke gets back. That will also be a bit light on the cooking front, but I will be making a cake on the holiday Monday. It's my birthday, and local work tradition is to bring cake for morning tea. I wonder if they'll recognise me after all this time off...

Seven Hour Saltbush Lamb

The dinner party was a great success on the food front. Here's the recipe for the lamb. It is really good - and I think it counts as "Aussie" tucker even without the shake of lemon myrtle. Saltbush is grown in places with salinity problems, and this flavour-infused meat is unique to Australia. I kept the flavourings minimal because of that, but this is a great method for regular lamb, too. I like to do it with lemon, garlic and oregano for a Greek touch. Stephanie Alexander has a similar recipe for a French style slow cooked lamb with haricot beans.

Seven Hour Saltbush Lamb
A large leg of saltbush lamb
5 cloves of garlic
olive oil
herbs (2 bay leaves, 3 large sprigs rosemary, 1/2 tsp dried lemon myrtle)
1 cup dry white wine

Brown lamb in the olive oil, in a frying pan. Transfer to crockpot, or a heavy casserole dish.
Deglaze pan with wine, pour over lamb. Throw in peeled garlic and herbs. Put on lid, and place in 120C oven - or run crockpot on low - for 7 hours. Lamb will come out meltingly tender, falling off the bones. Carve and place on serving platter. Serve reduced and strained juices on the side.

Notes: Turn it over once or twice during cooking if possible, and add a little stock or wine if it looks like drying out. I find the crockpot keeps it a lot moister than the oven. It's good to use the crockpot as then you have the oven free to make roast veggies.


Cooking today: Not much. I'm still not very well, and we still have plenty of stuff to use up. We'll eat out of the freezer this week, I think.