Tweaking recipes, Using Things Up

One reason for my fairly sparse blogging has been a dearth of new recipes. When I'm busy at work, and travelling, and eating out, home cooked food tends to resort to the staples.

Now that it's colder at night, a hearty soup is a fine thing. The most recent one I made was a variation on this chorizo and lentil soup. I had a tomato glut, and used B1's mouli to turn it into passata, so instead of a bit of tomato paste and a litre of chicken stock, I used half a litre of chicken stock and half a litre of passata. And I blended the soup before adding the chorizo; the bloke likes his soups smooth. (Except laksa. The rules are complicated.)

Another variation came because I was out of cumin. I decided to use a 1/2 teaspoon of ground wattleseed instead, having discovered quite some time ago that this goes surprisingly well with tomato. It adds a dark caramel roast savouriness - but do be careful not to overdo it. The half teaspoon was plenty.

So that was good.

I've also been cooking a lot of old standards. This week's muffin was apple and cinnamon, with some older apples from the fridge. We've been eating keema and spag bol with mince from the freezer. There's been a chicken noodle stirfry, and a lamb curry with paste from the market and the last of the beans from the garden. Homemade pizza is good for finishing the odds and ends of ham, salami, olive, artichokes, etc. I've been roasting tomatoes to use in soup and curry and pasta sauce, and roasting rhubarb from the garden - the latest time with some plums and rosewater.

I've also cooked and frozen a batch of figs, with the intent of making jam later in the year. We're off on a big holiday soon, and have our usual Easter houseguests before then, so I have no time to be fiddling with pectin and jars. I can't believe I never thought of doing this before. It's B1's idea.

Eating around the web

I'm very erratic with food reading on the web. There's a few blogs that I check regularly, but otherwise things just seem to turn up. From links friends post on facebook or message boards, mostly. Or sometimes I google an ingredient, and find something on some totally random site. I've had the chance to try quite a few things recently; with this crazy weather anything from salad to porridge is an option.

I googled quinoa a while ago and found a nice quinoa porridge. At the same site, a recipe for quinoa pilaf took my fancy. Now, as the bloke hates corn and walnuts, I had to make a variant. But the general idea is very adaptable. Quinoa cooked in stock, then fried up with onion, spices, and vegetables. It's good with that dark Tuscan kale, but you could try spinach or silverbeet. I served it as an accompaniment to some quick grilled lamb chops from that new Dickson butcher.

And 35C one day, 15C the next, it's still possible to have porridge. I was quite intrigued by this idea, cooking brown rice in a crockpot. I almost followed the recipe, except that I used low fat milk instead of full-fat, and coconut milk and a 1/4 cup of sugar instead of the sweetened condensed milk. And raspberries on top instead of cranberries or raisins cooked in. So, yeah, almost the same. The result is, well, OK. The bran separates off, while the inner rice goes squishy, which gives it more of a porridge texture than a rice pudding texture. Also I think it needed less sugar. I couldn't put maple syrup on top since it was already quite sweet enough for me.

Serious Eats crops up quite a lot, since I'm a facebook fan. This American site has some wonderful discussions. Check out this hilarious recipe for boiled water, and don't miss the reader comments. These chocolate chip cookies are from Serious Eats. I made them before Xmas, and have two sausages of dough still in the freezer waiting for the next cookie occasion.

And then there's this chocolate cake. I simply could not resist making this, as it is just so very weird. It's gluten-free - it uses not chickpea flour but actual chickpeas. I liked the flavour in the end. The chickpeas add some flavour, but it's quite neutral tending to nutty - a reasonable match to chocolate. The texture was less of a hit. It came out quite dry. I found that it was OK when tempered with a dollop of icecream, and B2 liked it, but B1 did not. So, variable.

I did edit the recipe slightly for Australian measures, so here you go.

Recipe: Chocolate Chickpea Cake

1 tablespoon butter, softened
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
150g dark cooking chocolate
2 x 420g tins of chickpeas
4 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Grease a small loaf tin with the butter, and "flour" it with the cocoa.
• Drain the chickpeas and rinse them well.
• Weigh out 2/3 of them, and set the rest aside for some other use.
• Put them in a food processor, with the eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla and baking powder.
• Puree until very smooth.
• Melt the chocolate, and blend it into the rest of the mix.
• Pour the cake batter into the tin and smooth surface.
• Bake at 180C for 45-60 minutes, until a knife comes out clean.
• Allow cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before inverting to cooling rack to cool completely.
• Dust with icing sugar just before serving.

Note: I used the extra chickpeas in a mixed veggie curry. You could also add them to a soup or a salad, or mash them up with garlic, lemon and tahini to make hommous.

I like to melt chocolate in the microwave - break it up into a glass bowl, zap it for 20 sec, stir well, and repeat until all is melted. Much easier than a double boiler, or the old bowl over boiling water technique.

Making the most of a truffle

Yep, scrambled eggs.

So, as is becoming customary, I apologise for not posting much these days. I have been thinking of taking up tweeting, because that way I could have said stuff like "Hi all, truffles at EPIC market this week!" and "Hey, 40% discount on cookbooks at Borders this weekend" at a time when it was actually relevant. Like two weeks ago. Too late now. I intend to get a fancy new iphone sometime soonish, but meanwhile I am such a late adopter that I still haven't got round to net connecting my old Nokia.

So, sorry if you almost missed truffle season. There are still some remnants around - the Truffle Festival runs for the whole month of July, and there's truffle dinners still happening at Flint, Pulp Kitchen and Locanda.

My way to make the most of truffles is pretty much what I did last year. Buy a small piece, pop it in a box of risotto rice and fresh eggs, and let it infuse for a week. I only had about 15g, and by the end of the week it was a bit less. It dehydrates somewhat during the infusion process.

I used a third to add to about 300g of mushrooms, panfried in butter. Two thirds of these went into a simple mushroom and leek risotto, made with the infused rice and another third of the truffle. The final third went into the scrambled eggs, which were made with the infused eggs. And voila: truffled scrambled eggs, served with truffled mushrooms, sourdough toast and a fried tomato.

At that Borders sale I bought the new Jamie Oliver book - I'm not crazy about his TV personality, but I do like his cooking style and his recipes. This one is "Jamie Does...", based on a TV series that I haven't seen and probably won't. He goes to Fance, Italy, Morocco and more, and this is the recipe collection. He has a truffled omelet recipe in the French section, where he uses 5g black truffle for 3 eggs. I had more eggs, but they were infused.

And remember those lentils? They were from the same Jamie book. And just to make sure I didn't miss out on any truffled goodness, when I saved the mushrooms for risotto, I deglazed the pan with some Fino sherry and chucked that into the lentils. I didn't mention that last time, because it's not reproducible.

PS: No, I do not like Master Chef either.

Things I've learned

Recently I was looking at cracked.com, that scary site of internet crack; it's second only to tvtropes.org in addictiveness. Just ONE more funny list. I'll just follow that ONE more link. No, OK just ONE more. Oh, I wonder what that next one is like. Hang on, how did it get to be 3am? So with due warning given, look at just this ONE list of the 10 most important things they didn't teach you in school. It's hilariously and totally true, all of it.

In the spirit of that, but on a very much lesser scale, here are some things I've learned recently.

1) You know when you cut yourself while chopping up food, and put on a bandaid really tightly, because you remember from first aid that compression stops bleeding? Always remember to loosen it within the hour. Ow.

2) You really shouldn't pot roast one of those heart-tick extra lean cuts of meat. It will come out much too dry.

3) An overly dry piece of meat can be turned into a rather good cottage pie, by chopping it very finely and adding tomato paste, herbs, stock, wine, carrots, onions, peas etc, then simmering together for an hour or so to meld. Then add a good topping of mash and bake until hot.

4) You don't have to peel your spuds under cold running water. Dunking them in a bowl of warmish water will do nicely, once to peel, once to rinse clean. It feels much better in midwinter, and it saves water.

5) Don't use a serrated knife to chop up cold (dry) meat. Use a chef's knife or carving knife. (See point one.)

On the importance of shopping

It's almost a cliche now that the best chefs do their marketing in person. You have to get in on the ground to find the best and freshest, to get a nose for what's in season. You see this on TV shows from Iron Chef via Jamie Oliver to Rick Stein - and our own local Jan Gundlach actually has his premises right there at the Fyshwick market. Of course in reality, a lot of top chefs will outsource this task to trusted providores, but it's nevertheless true that to get a great meal, somebody has to have done a great job of the shopping.

It's even more true when you're not making stuff from scratch. I've made this same pasta dish twice now. And while it was from the identical recipe, the results were spectacularly different. One was sublime, the other just rated "meh, not too bad, it will do for a week night".

The recipe is from a little cookbook produced as a work social club fundraiser. I bought it on the day I started the new job. We have several keen cooks where I work, though why they insist on doing their Red Cross fundraiser bake sales on a Friday I don't know. I can easily bake stuff on a Sunday arvo, but Thursday night is beyond me. Just this Sunday past I made roast chicken in the Stephanie Alexander style (lemon and rosemary and olive oil) with accompanying baked veg; a beef potroast braised in Guinness with parsnips and prunes; a leek and potato soup; I got some tandoori chicken wings on to marinade; and I roasted tomatoes for a dhal. But Thursday? On Thursday, it's eat leftovers or eat out. Or I could make this pasta.

Here is the fantastic/meh pasta recipe.

Recipe: Tortellini with bacon and pesto cream sauce
1 packet bought tortellini (or ravioli)
1/2 cup pesto
3/4 cup cream
4 short cut bacon rashers
150g baby spinach leaves
A handful of pine nuts

* Cook pasta according to packet directions, in lots of boiling water.
* Meanwhile, lightly toast the pine nuts and chop the bacon.
* Drain the pasta and set aside.
* Spray pan with a little olive oil and fry the bacon for a couple of minutes.
* Add pinenuts, pesto, and cream, and mix well.
* Stir in the baby spinach and let just barely wilt.
* Stir through the pasta.

Serve with a sprinkle of good parmesan and a salad or steamed broccoli. It's quite rich from the cream.

The "Fantastic" options:
I used Wee Jasper Pasta spinach, ricotta and pinenut ravioli. These people sell their handmade pasta at the EPIC markets on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month. And the pesto was made by chef Tom Moore of Gundaroo Grazing restaurant, with basil from their garden. I doubt he'll be making more until next summer.

The "Meh" options:
I used Latina fresh spinach & ricotta ravioli, and a pesto that I found in the supermarket. It's called "inspire", and it's really rather good for its genre. It does at least contain some pine nuts, which most supermarket brands don't.


Notes: to toast pine nuts, toss them in a dry frying pan on the rangetop, or a pie plate in the oven which you shake regularly. Watch closely, they will burn very quickly once they start to change colour. You want golden, not dark brown!

Handmade Food

The handmade market was on yesterday. If you haven't discovered these already, you should check them out! I'm a huge fan. The market seems to have found a stable venue at the Kamberra Wine Centre, after outgrowing the Albert Hall and trying out the Yarralumla Woolshed. The next one will be 11th September - a great chance to start your Xmas shopping. But if you want to get in earlier, there's now also a shop in Civic which has a good selection of the various designers' wares.

The philosophy of Handmade is that the stuff it sells is, well, handmade. It is to local arts and crafts people what the Growers' market is to to local farmers and small food producers. You'll find cards, books, quilts and quilt supplies, felted gear, handmade clothes, bags, teapots, jewelry, slippers and much more. This is the first time that I did not come home with a piece of jewelry by cardog. But I did get a new top by Wendy Leigh - it's made of stretch dark green rayon ribbed velvet, with a black knit cowl neck and a small black lacy sequinned feature.

And then there's the food! Well, here's the full list. Most of them will be familiar if you go to the EPIC and Kingston markets. There's a mix of people selling things to take home and things to eat there. The large area out the back had plenty of seating, an entertainer making balloon animals for the kids, and lots of yummy food for sale. Gourmet pizza and sausages and muffins and more. Also, for the grown-ups, there's Zierholz beer, and local wines and spirits. I wasn't entirely persuaded by the Grog Shed, run by Wombat Heights Liqueurs. I'm not a fan of fruit wines, but if you are, why not give it the walnut rum and cherry port a try.


And scattered through the front open air markets and the indoor stalls were many other food producers. The Curious Chocolatier was there, and I bought a bar of dark choc with walnuts and honey. She makes mostly bars rather than individual pieces, in some very unusual flavours. Coffee and fennel, anyone? Strawberry and Szechuan pepper? There was Lindsey and Edmunds, too, and the Lime Grove and Homeleigh Grove people, and some people making popcorn and caramelised nuts (not together, though I must ask why not?)

And cupcakes - there was not one but two cupcake makers. The ones illustrated are amazing pieces of fondant and buttercream art, from Liz Wright at pARTycakes. I had to buy some for arvo tea - a friend was making a flying visit to Canberra for lawyer and accountant reasons, and a good cup of tea and a cupcake was clearly needed. (And a martini, but that's The Bloke's specialty.) The cakes are not just decorative, but also good to eat. Thankfully, Wright's fondant isn't so sweet as to make you gag, as some are. The cakes themselves are on the solid mudcake side rather than fluffy sponge, good moist rich chocolate and caramel flavours. At $25 for six, these are special occasion cakes.

The other cupcake seller's wares were a little cheaper at $4 per cake, and less dramatically artistic in presentation. They were topped with simple buttercream swirls. But they are good cake - I had a passionfruit one, also quite dense and moist. These are made by A Moment on The Lips, who will deliver you a dozen cupcakes, as well as do more arty things. Check out the gorgeous cupcake bouquets on their website! And they had a very cute fondant sculpted baby dragon and egg cake on display.

The other stuff that I bought was from Crankypants - I know they're regulars at Kingston, but for some reason I don't make it there often enough. I got some proper piccalilli, lemon curd, and smoky caramelised onions. The onions were great topping homemade steak sangers last night. Lemon curd on crumpets for breakfast, and a cheese, tomato and piccalilli sandwich for lunch. Yum.

Old fashioned things, and the importance of numeracy

My good friend B1 has been out of town a lot, for personal reasons that I won't go into on this blog. Recently she was back, and hinted shamelessly at me about lamb shanks and creme caramel. So what could I do but comply? I even managed to put this together on a weeknight by dint of moderate planning ahead.

I didn't quite manage enough forward planning to get market lamb, so I had to get the shanks from Woolworths, who sell them as whole bones, not the easier to manage French trimmed version. They're not particularly cheap - they averaged about $4.50 a piece, which for the actual amount of meat makes it's cheaper to buy a hunk of rump steak.


I do actually remember when they were cheap - the offcut bit, good for a soup, or a cheap family meal, but not fit to bring out for company. That was before the revival of the slow cooked homestyle food in fancy restaurants. My Mum hasn't kept up with the trends, and a while ago was horrified when some visiting friends chose to eat lamb shanks at a fancy restaurant. To her generation, it sounds like ordering spam. But really, it's good - I remember trying to bags the shank end of the lamb roast whenever possible. Sticky, tender and full of flavour.

I more or less followed this recipe from allrecipes.com.au, which involves browning the meat & veg, then a slow cook in red wine, tomatoes and stock, with lots of herbs, and in my addition, some strips of lean bacon. For six lamb shanks, that's two tins of tomatoes and a whole bottle of red, then stock to top up. Then it's overnight in the huge cooking pot in a very slow oven (120) - my slow cooker was too small to take them. Simply reheat for dinner. I served it with mash, which I enriched with a little leftover cream, and frozen baby peas. Half the shanks minus bone, and most of the veg and sauce went into the freezer, to be a ragout later on. With the Italian tomato, garlic and rosemary flavours, it should go well with pasta.

I had leftover cream, of course, from the creme caramel. This is another easy one to cook ahead, I made the caramel on a Monday night, baked the custard on Tuesday and served them on Wednesday. In this case, I used a Maggie Beer recipe, from the Maggie's Harvest book. I looked up several to get the proportions, and decided to use the one with the whole eggs. I have too many egg whites in the freezer already.

The importance of numeracy comes in here. Check the recipe and see if you can spot the problem!

Recipe: Maggie Beer's Creme Caramel
110g sugar
125ml water
-
4 large eggs
125g caster sugar
250ml cream
300ml milk
1 vanilla bean

First, make the caramel. Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat until sugar is dissolved. Continue to heat until it turns into a dark amber colour - watch carefully when it first starts to turn, because it can be quite quick to change. Pour the hot caramel into 4x120ml capacity individual ramekins, and swirl a little to get it around the edges. Leave to set.

Heat the milk and cream together with the vanilla bean and scraped out seeds. Bring to just off boiling, then remove from heat and let cool. Overnight is fine. Later, make the custard by beating the eggs, sugar and re-warmed vanilla infused milk together. Strain this into a jug.

Prepare a large roasting tin with a folded tea-towel on the base, then the caramel ramekins. Pour the custard into the ramekins in situ, then gently pour hot water around them to soak the tea towel. Fill up as high as you can manage around the edges of the ramekins, without getting water into the custard when you move it.

Bake in a 180 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool in their water-bath, then refrigerate until ready. To serve, run a knife around the edge of the ramekin and invert it onto a plate. The caramel will mostly have dissolved into a sauce, though if you've done a thick layer there may be some left.



Notes: Actually I reduced the sugar in the custard from the 145g in the recipe, and slightly changed the milk/cream balance because I had low fat milk in the house. (Hers: 375ml milk, 190ml cream.)

And did you spot it? If the eggs make up about 200ml, then what we have here is about 650ml of custard. This is not going to fit into 4x120ml ramekins! I spotted the need to get more ramekins - I used six. I also increased the caramel amount by half, which I think was unnecessary, since the caramel layer came out much thicker than it needed to be.

Making the caramel dark gives it a bitter-sweet sharp edge, which makes the dessert more interesting and less cloying. You can make it a bit lighter, if you prefer.

Achacha!

Bless you!

Is it an egg? Was that an Easter display? No, actually this is a fruit. Though adding some tamarillos and some real eggs might make it into a good Easter display, it's unfortunately very tightly seasonal at the moment. February only.

It's from Bolivia, via Far North Queensland, with a last stop at Ziggy's, in Belconnen Fresh Food Market. I picked up a few to try, way back on some Sunday in February, and I was glad that I thought to check the web first. It came with a little leaflet explaining how you pop them open and slip out the fruit, but that didn't explain that you can infuse the skins for a drink.

Here's some recipes from the growers' website. It's quite a good website for a food supplier: real information, pretty pictures, recipes, no funky but unusable flash, no boring corporate speak. Well done, them!

The fruit is a relative of the mangosteen, and is called achachairu when it's at home. It's got quite large stones which the fruit clings to, and it's a bit tarter and less perfumed than the mangosteen, though with a very similar texture. And cheaper. I'll be looking out for them next year.

I ate them straight, and put the skins in a jar of water in the fridge to infuse. After 24 hours it was quite well coloured, and tasty. It's a little tart and fruity, but much lighter than a juice. More like an iced tea. I didn't think it needed sugar, but then I like my iced tea unsweetened, too.

What happened at Easter

Plenty! Of course we had the Folk Festival, with our regular visitors A,J & C. Eight year old C was very taken with the kittens, and so we need another photo of them. (Any excuse, eh?) Here they are being uncharacteristically quiet and well-behaved. Archie on the left, Zeppo on the right.

Anyway, this means our annual dinner, and lots of fast food at the folkie. The festival food is actually remarkably good - plenty of fresh veggie options and good ethnic eating. With some junk if you want it, but why would you? The satay chicken and fritter people were my favourite this year. They had chicken breast (or tofu) skewers with thick peanut sauce, served on jasmine rice with a fresh beansprout salad; or zucchini, fetta & corn fritters with sourcream and smoky tomato relish - bacon optional. Spaghetti Junction is another favourite - I do love seeing the fresh spaghetti come spiralling out of the pasta machine. They do a very good vegetarian puttanesca - no anchovies, but with almonds - and their creamy walnut sauce is rather fine, too.

We had our dinner on Friday night, to which HH brought her terrific pot roast chickens in vermouth, with potatoes. I provided entrees, veggies and dessert. All was very successful. The chicken went on to make a few sandwiches and some rather excellent stock which I'm planning to use tonight in a risotto.

For entrees, I went modern and did goat cheese and caramelised onion tartlets set on a salad of rocket and balsamic dressed beetroot. I made up the recipe as I went along, and then I found that it's such a common idea that mine is pretty much the same as the one that's first up when you google. Delia Smith's, in this case. Though I used a plain shortcrust and no thyme, and I made half of them with blue cheese. The goat cheese was a very mild one that I picked up at Choku Bai Jo; the beetroot also from them, home baked then tossed with balsamic glaze.

For veggies, I did yellow pattypan squash roasted with olive oil and herbs (rosemary and bay from the garden). I also steamed some green beans, and tossed through a bit of butter and toasted slivered almonds to make them a bit more special.

And for dessert I wanted to make Key Lime Pie, but I don't know if you can even get key limes of lime juice in Australia. I used plain old Tahitian limes. I followed an Epicurious recipe, noting some suggestions from the comments. If you have a smaller pie plate than specified, the basic recipe could work. But if you have a deeper 25cm spring form pan, then double the filling quantity is definitely the way to go. It would look pretty pathetic at half the depth. I also added the zest of the limes, and used an entire pack of granita biscuits, and did not bother baking the crumb crust. The picture's not the best, but it's an idea. This is quite delicious, and I served shop bought icecream on the side - Maggie Beer's orange and lemon curd, and Serendipity blood orange sorbet.

I remembered near the last minute that pregnant people aren't supposed to eat uncooked eggs, and the pie does contain egg that is probably not heated enough. So I thought of an alternative, and made some poached pears for P. This was a very lucky, as it's a great favourite of hers. Here's the recipe I made up - very easy!


Recipe: Caramel Cider Pears
4 firm pears
375ml cider
4 tblsp dark brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
Peel the pears, leaving them whole. Do not remove the stalk, but do cut off any fibre-y bits at the base.
Put the pears in a saucepan, with the cider, sugar and cinnamon.
Poach gently for 1 1/2 hours, turning regularly to get even coverage.
Leave the saucepan lid on for the first hour, then remove lid to reduce sauce.

Serve these warm with some Maggie Beer burnt fig, honeycomb and caramel icecream if you can!

Notes: I used corella pears, and a stubby of strongbow dry that someone had left behind at a party sometime - we're not cider drinkers. And also, on the night, I included a somewhat old golden delicious apple, which completely fell to bits and made the sauce a bit thicker and more apple-y.

Summertime, salad time

Hot sunny days have been good for these little grape tomatoes. They are "honey grapes" that I got from Bunnings, and they are well named. They're amazing little bursts of sweet tomato goodness. I have them in a self-watering pot, which makes sense considering what a slack gardener I am. These and the Russian Brown have survived the heat well.

I'm also still getting plenty of rhubarb, and a bit of spinach, and lots of herbs, but not much else at the moment. My lettuces went to seed, and I didn't replant the hydroponic thing after removing them. My beans died in the heat, maybe because I didn't water them enough. Or was it snails that killed them? Or both. Whatever. There's a butternut pumpkin vine and some Kipfler potato plants, and a lot of figs coming on the small tree, but they aren't ready to harvest yet.


In this heat, salads are welcome. Here's one I made on the weekend - cured salmon, avocado, mixed greens, cucumber, and a simple dressing of good olive oil and lemon juice. So there's another use for that avocado. I would have added some grape tomatoes, but I ate them all after I took the picture. I'm now waiting for the green ones to ripen - and the plant has some flowers too, so there's even more to come.

Internet Salmagundi, Special Xmas edition

This is not exactly how I did my turkey, though mine did also involve a bacon wrap. But it sounds even more awesome. Though there isn't any stuffing and I'm not sure if you'd get good pan juices for gravy. Perhaps it could be modified.

A while back, some people were discussing raw milk - here's a good article on the subject.

And some funnies:

Atheist Holiday Traditions

The War on Xmas

And look.. it's Santa Cephalopod!

On the countdown

Last weekend before Xmas!

I was just looking back on my blog to see what I did before, and I realised that I have not done a proper Xmas dinner at home since I started writing here. My basic reference is Delia Smith's Christmas book, which I use for things like turkey timing and assorted inspiration. It's not ideal: being British, Delia assumes we'll have winter seasonal fruit and veg. Now I have bought Margaret Fulton's Xmas book, after nobody gave it to me last year despite copious hints, but I haven't had a lot of chance to read it yet.

And now there's less than a week to go, and we'll have eleven people to lunch on Friday. Two of us, seven relatives, and two friends - B1 and M. With my new job, I'll be working up to the 24th, so I'll be buying more than I usually do. I've been to the market this morning, where I bought a huge macadamia and brandy Christmas pudding from Pudding Lane - expensive, but I had a sample and it's awesome. I also got a few mince pies from the "bush breads" people. If I like them, I'll get more at the twilight market on Wednesday. I've tried several supermarket brands, and most of them are easily beaten by a spicy fruit roll biscuit.

I usually make Delia's cinnamon icecream, and sometimes I make a frozen yule log with that as the filling in a chocolate sponge roll, but this year I'm just buying premium cream and icecream, and B1 is bringing a non-pudding dessert. I may even buy pre-made custard. The ham and turkey are on order at Eco Meats, and I'm planning to dispatch some of the relatives to collect them while I'm at work. Luckily B1 is bringing veggies, so there's another thing not to worry about.

This morning I bought a kilo slab of salmon to cure, which I've just now got started. I also have blueberries, which I'm using for a trifle. So far I've stewed them up with vanilla sugar and water. Expect more on that later. For now, here's the salmon, ready to go in the fridge for a few days cure. And now it's time to get on with the next jobs: decorating the cake, cleaning out the fridge, tidying the house, wrapping the presents... weekends are too short!

Marketing again

I made it to the Growers' Market again yesterday. They now have flyers with the times. There are two markets left this year:

* Saturday 19th December 2009 8am to 11am; and
* Wednesday 23rd December 2009 Twilight Market 4pm to 7pm.

And then next year they resume on 16 Jan.

In stock at the moment, there is lot of stone fruit, especially cherries. Some early peaches and apricots are out. New season garlic is also in, with big braids of purple, white, Russian and elephant garlic featuring all over the place.

I stocked up on cherries, and bought a few plumcots. Otherwise, I mostly bought bread and meat and salad, as I have too many veggies in the crisper needing to be used up. A good veggie curry seems like the plan for that - and I bought some hoggett chops to make a meat one. I'm also planning a noodle stirfry with fresh beansprouts and the remains of last week's herbs, and I picked up some frozen ravioli. I've got the old tomatoes and a head of new garlic in the oven to roast for a sauce.

I'm intending to go to the Xmas twilight market for a big stock up on Xmas fruit and veg. Maybe flex off work a little early if I can manage it. (Ooh, the novelty of flex!) I'll have family in town by then, so I can take them along, and nonchalantly point out Lindsay and Edmunds, and Robin Rowe...

The Lazy Way

I know it's all uncool, and serious cooks make their own pasta sauces and curry pastes; and do all their own meat & veg prep from fresh; and blend their own spice mixes from whole spices; and all that sort of thing. But I'm quite a sucker for a nice looking sauce being sold at a market stall. Or a good name on a product in a supermarket. Sometimes this works really well; sometimes it's just OK and a useful time-saver. And sometimes you just want to tip it in the garbage and pretend it never happened.

On the "works really well" scale:
1) Frozen baby peas. Shelling fresh peas is one of those jobs that you need to do in company, or at least with the radio or TV on. I was reminded of this recently when I bought a kilo of peas in the pod from the market. Shelling peas isn't unpleasant work, but compared to the ease of just chucking some frozen peas in the microwave, it's ridiculously laborious. And the frozen ones are more reliable. I was sampling as I shelled (of course) and while some were beautifully sweet, some were insect attacked, and some were mealy and tasteless.

2) Tubs of Thai curry pastes. Honestly, many Thai people use these too. On the advice of a Thai chef, I usually buy Maesri or Mae Ploy brands. Find them in most Asian grocers.

3) Crankypants Adobo marinade. Yum! It doesn't seem to be listed on their website, so I hope they haven't discontinued it. Find them at the Kingston Sunday markets, and the Handmade markets.

4) Herbie's spice and herb blends. He knows what he's doing. Find them at Cooking Coordinates, Manuka Fine Foods and many other places.

5) Ameet's Homestyle curry sauces. I bought a jar of Kashmiri Masala from a lovely young Indian woman with a thick plait of dark hair down her back, at the Growers' Market last week. I fondly imagine that it's her mother or grandmother's recipe, but anyway, it's a small Australian company. There's so artificial colours or preservatives, and it was very delicious. I used some Galloway chuck steak in it.

Less successful things follow.

Reasonable for rush hour:
On the "it's OK" level of the scale, there's a lot of things. Some good examples from the supermarket include:
* Patak's Indian curry pastes
* Some of the Paul Newman and Five Brothers jarred pasta sauces
* Some of the San Remo and Latina refrigerated pasta sauces - the plainer tomato ones, mainly.
* frozen "oven chips", spinach and green beans - but only if the beans are for a longer cooking time, they won't be crisp. In a veggie curry, for example.


Got very close to tipping in the garbage
Foodlover's macadamia satay sauce - to my taste, it is thin and harsh, and the nut flavour seemed artificial, like in those flavoured coffees. But I added lots of peanut butter and lime juice and chilli, and it turned out OK. Hmm, but now I think of it, so would water.

Ainsley Harriot's "citrus kick" couscous - this seemed to be very heavy on citric acid and dried onion in flavour. Not nice at all. If I hadn't had a lot of chilli to cover it up, I might have tipped it out. I never bought it again, and won't now try any others in his range.

Actually tipped in the garbage:
This almost never happens, as I'm against waste. I'll still eat food that isn't very good. It's got to be seriously dire to go uneaten into the bin. That usually means badly burned, or gone off, or well past its use-by date. But one product made it to the bin: Jamie Oliver's tomato and chilli pasta sauce. This tasted to me like tinned tomato soup with a dash of tabasco. And I had such lovely ham and olives waiting to be to put in it that I couldn't bear to spoil them. An ordinary tin of tomatoes was a much better choice.

Well, I'm back.

Happy December, everyone!

We're on for the count down to Xmas, and all the foodie stuff that goes along with that. I've ordered a free-range turkey and half a ham from Eco meats; the cake has been soaking up its weekly dose of brandy for almost two months now; and the Farmers' market special Xmas times have been scheduled. I'm annoyed that I forgot to pick up a leaflet, since they haven't posted hours on their website. I'm pretty sure there's an evening market on 23rd Dec.

In the market, it's cherry season. You pay from $6 to $12 a kilo, depending on the variety and quality. So I simply have to go to the market every week for a couple of kilos. I have sweet black rons and sharper bright red merchants in the fridge right now. So good! Blueberries are also pretty good, though not as cheap - I got 500g for $12. I've been eating them straight, and I made some blueberry muffins on Sunday.

The garden's doing alright. A few things got crisped in the week of 30-38 degree heat, so I've replanted a bit. I've been picking rhubarb and herbs, and the apricot, tomatoes and boysenberries are setting fruit. A few redcurrants are nearly ripe, though there won't be enough of those to do anything with except maybe adding to the breakfast cereal. Or perhaps to the rhubarb.

In personal news, I'm starting a new job next week. The Public Service has got me at last! It's actually my first preference out of all the public service jobs I applied for, so I feel pretty lucky. I got the job offer officially on 19 Nov, and we went off and bought a new car the same day. I'll be working in Bruce, near Cafe Momo and Ellacure, neither of which I've managed to get to yet.

So hey, I'm not DOOOOOOMED to useless unemployment and depression (well, duh). I have recovered some cheerfulness and enthusiasm. Recently I've been thinking of blog posts that I should write. I'm planning to get back to this more regularly, maybe twice weekly or so.

The cats are OK. Plummet is cheerfully getting fat on his renal diet food and Shadow's leftovers. Shadow is still alive, bright eyed and bouncy, though he's taken up a few odd habits. Sleeping under the car is the most annoying. He has to be coaxed to eat, and won't touch anything but real meat and tuna. He got some fillet steak trimmings a week or so back, and I was thinking how extravagantly cat-tragic a thing that was. And then I worked out the price of the k/d tinned food that Plummet is supposed to eat. The steak was cheaper. Lucky I've got that job, now.

So, how's it going?

One does adapt to circumstances. After our initial scare that Shadow might have to be put down immediately, it was a great relief that he's responded well enough to his treatment to be able to come home. So now we merely have kittehs with a terminal disease, one very far advanced. They also have very silly haircuts. We're trying to get Plummet to accept the renal diet, which he's kind of almost OK with, except that he can smell the tuna and meat that Shadow is getting. Shadow won't eat anything else, and since he won't last long, he may as well enjoy his last few months.

That renal diet is expensive! About ten times the cost of whiskas. The vet gave me a list of recipes to make your own, which I was quite keen on until I read them. I'm pretty sure they are American. Cans of clams aren't exactly standard fare around here. Oh well. As long as he's eating moderately well, that's the main thing. They're both bouncing around the house seemingly as healthy as horses. That's kidney disease for you - all well until sudden collapse.


In other news, I'm still feeling a bit down and slightly off my food. The job situation is getting to me, even though I know that the Public Service processes are very slow. Not very much music is happening either; my singing teacher is down with a very nasty shoulder injury. Too much facebook game time is going on. Hey, wanna be my friend, and play cafe world and fellowship and that zoo game thing and farmville and treasure mania and bejeweled blitz? Hmmmm. Could be slightly excessive there...

Well, I'd better look more on the bright side. I'm still reviewing for the Canberra Times, so I get to go out for fancy dinners even while unemployed, yay! And it's springtime and the garden is doing well. I planted Kipfler potatoes and they are up and flourishing. There's spinach and rhubarb coming along and my hydroponic lettuces are growing quickly. Perhaps too quickly, they're stealing the water from the other plants in the box. The baby apricot tree is setting fruit, the fig tree and the new cherry tree are sprouting leaves. And we've had a lovely display of irises, too.

I have cooked a few things, mostly simple repeats like the pulled pork, brown bean sauce noodles, spag bog, and grilled meats and sausages. I have a half finished post on a curry dinner that I made before all this fuss. I should finish that one off, I suppose. I've also made an egg and leek and potato dish that won't be reappearing on the menu because it needs too many saucepans. I've also made the annual Xmas cake, and I used my gorgeous new birthday cake pan to make the orange cake that came on its label. This is it - photo is not ideal, and some icing would enhance it, but I think it's clear enough to work out what it is. Cool, eh?

I've also been out for a few meals. We've done pre-theatre quick dinners at several places. The Wig & Pen - great beer, tolerable pub grub - is an old standard and close to the Street Theatre. Tosolini's is pretty good food, convenient to the Canberra Theatre. Entree sized pastas are enough if you have bread and salad, too, and it's pretty quick. And we also tried out Coo, which had terrible, terrible service. We only ordered sushi, and though you'd think that would be quick, only two of our 4 items actually made it to our table in 45 minutes, and then we had to leave. It is very new, though, so I'll be giving them another chance some time. And the food we did have was delicious, and they apologised a lot.

Followups and repeats

So yes, I have been cooking without blogging. It's been repeats, along with a couple of pudding that I have assigned to a new post. I have recently made a ham and olive arrabiatta style pasta sauce, a "bolognese" pasta sauce, a keema, a roast chook, a risotto with leftover chicken; steak & salad; a massaman curry from a tub of paste; and sausages and salad. When I started this blog I was wondering how long it would be before I ran out of ideas, but it seems the answer is not too soon. Even though the Canberra Times has taken a lot of my review writing options, I still experiment with new ideas and techniques. Truffles and duck featured recently, as you may recall.

And I do follow up some of the ideas I spot on the net. Here are a few followup notes:

1. I made Alton Brown's granola, though I decided to use golden syrup. Maple is so expensive, and I do really like golden syrup. I also chucked in a half cup of sesame seeds. It's fine, but I still prefer Nigella's. Alton's is less sweet, which is good for me, so I will reduce the sugars on that next time I make hers. I had a problem with the cashews, too. 250F is only 120C, but even so they were starting to burn, especially the ones sitting around the edges. I reduced it further to 100C after that, but there are still some over-scorched ones. Since I caught it early, they are dark brown rather than black. But be warned - toasting cashews takes a lower temperature than almonds.

2. The vanilla essence proved disappointing. It darkened to a nice medium-weak tea colour after a couple of weeks, which was encouraging, but then it stayed put. It's more of a strong vanilla vodka than a real essence. I am now using it as a flavour, in cases where you need quite a lot of liquid so you can splash it in generously.

3. Those devilled kidneys. Let me remind you of the quantity for eight kidneys. You need two ounces of butter, and:

“I have accurately exacted the following measures. They are: three tablespoons of worstershire sauce; one heaping tablespoon of Coleman’s English mustard powder; one tablespoon of freshly squeezed juice of a lemon; half a table glass of water; one two-ounce canister of Fullers Earth, one substantial tablespoon of cayenne pepper; a heaping pinch of ground black pepper; and four drops of Tabasco sauce.”

Holmes was being sloppy here. It's "Worcestershire" sauce, and Fuller's Earth is basically fine clay (in the story, Watson surreptitiously removes this). There's also an amusing contrast between the substantial tablespoon of (potent!) cayenne pepper and the mere four drops of (mild) Tabasco.

I can only assume that Holmes' cayenne came in a slow ship from India, and it sat in warehouses for a year or two, and then on a grocer's shelf for another year going slowly stale. However, my cayenne comes from the Indian grocer and it is knock-your-socks off hot. I used a heaped teaspoon instead and it was still very potent. I had to go eat a tub of yoghurt for dessert, just to cool down.

So, well, use your judgement about your hot foods. I find that the heat comes off the mustard quite a lot with cooking, so this amount is fine. I used Keen's, since that's what I have. And water? Really? Just say no. The kidneys release quite a lot of juice, so you don't need much extra liquid. A tablespoon of brandy is the ticket here.

Internet Salmagundi XV

Food
Flags made from food! The Australian one is a meat pie, of course.

Supposedly the 50 best foods on the planet, and where to eat them. No Australians, but then the selection is rather highly debatable. It has best milkshake and burger and pizza, and trendy high end items, but no best kangaroo steak. Nor anything but the most famous of non-Anglo ethnic foods.

Speaking of Anglo ethnic foods, 'tis the season for devilled kidneys. Lamb kidneys $3 for 6 in that Civic butcher whose name I can't remember. Progressive Dinner Party has a hilarious Holmesian story and recipe, which I think I must make soon.

Notes on the food revolution - an article at Salon about this new book, Cook Food by Lisa Jervis, that I WANT MUST HAVE GIMME NOW PLS!!eleventy!11! Who is Lisa Jervis, you may ask? Well, she's awesome, but not commonly known as a food writer...

Not Food
Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Yarrr.

The UK government has apologised for the appalling treatment of Alan Turing. A surprisingly good statement from Gordon Brown, there.

My favourite biology/atheism blogger, PZ Myers is coming to Australia next year. I'm tempted to go, and naturally wear my octopus shirt. Also there will be Richard Dawkins and Sue-Ann Post. Fangrrl swoons.

You think your internet connection is slow? Try the pigeon test. In case you're wondering, this is not why I haven't written anything for a week - that's more due to job panic, plus a bit of can't-be-arsedness, plus no really notable cooking or eating to report. Hmm, maybe I'll do a backlog of the repeats next.

Scum Mushrooms and Magnificent Bikes

We've been to Sydney. The key reason was to go to IKEA, but of course other things fit in. We visited our friends with the orange tree, and the Bloke's family. And I got in my required Galaxy and Abbey's fix. I came home with only 8 new books - quite restrained of me, I thought. The Bloke didn't get to test ride his proposed new motorbike because the shop stuffed up, but at least he got to gaze in wonder at some amazing classic and custom bikes. And we got a new kitchen table.

In addition to mind-numbingly enormous selections of shelves, beds, tables etc etc, IKEA also stocks smaller things like kitchenware and food. The kitchenware is right at the end, and my mind was too numbed to comprehend it. I did have a scant quarter of a brain left for food, and since it was right there next to where we had to wait for our table to be got out of the warehouse, I browsed around and bought Swedish food. Because IKEA, as any fule kno, is Swedish. I skipped the refrigerated stuff and got lollies, cloudberry jam, and a bread mix. If I get a chance some time, I'll buy some cheese and caviar and pickled herrings, but frozen meatballs seems a little silly when they're so easy to make. I half wish I'd got to the cafe and had princess cake or real cinnamon rolls, but we were pretty full from brunch.

Anyway, these Skumkantarell lollies are quite inoffensive, despite the funny name. Actually, "skum" means foam - and "sylt" means jam. They are cute little white mushrooms with pink caps who - according to the packaging - like to wear glasses and take baths. The actual lollies are not anthropomorphic, so you don't have to worry about biting their heads off.

When you open the pack, the chemical raspberry essence smell hits you. They're very much like our milk bottle sweets, only raspberry flavoured and slightly softer. The other lollies I got were fruit gums, and they were also mostly harmless - except for the salmiaks. It's hard to describe salmiak to the uninitiated, but salted ammonia licorice comes close. I'm not a fan. Luckily these are easy to avoid, being a distinctive black.

We ate at several places, of course. On Friday night, we were at The Harp in Tempe. Their bistro has a fair amount of Irish-style food as well as burgers and such. We sat in a booth in the main bar, and I drank Guinness. For dinner, I had the pork knuckle ($20), which was delicious - mash, red cabbage, apple sauce and cider gravy with a huge lump of roast pig. Actually it's mostly bone, like a lamb shank, but it looks impressively enormous, and the meat is similarly gelatinous. Plus bonus crackling!

Saturday brunch was at Deus ex Machina, in Camperdown. This place is completely awesome. It was my second visit - I had a weekday lunch there about a year ago, and it was pretty quiet then. But Saturday late morning it was packed. I had a huge breakfast of poached eggs, bacon, tomato, mushroom, asparagus and toast ($17), all generously portioned - half a dozen fat asparagus spears, yum. And a rather good coffee. The space is a converted warehouse, and the hugely high ceiling makes it feel very spacious.

It's a gorgeous space with amazing art works, especially featuring bikes both motor- and push-. There's an associated bike shop adjoining, and we browsed around there without actually buying anything. I admit I was tempted by the polka dot open-face helmet, but it would look rather silly on my Kwaka with my boring practical body-armoured jacket. The Bloke picked out half a dozen retro and vintage styled bikes that he's going to get any day now, just as soon as we win lotto.

We had dinner with The Bloke's family - BBQ lamb and salads, and a classic chocolate mousse with cognac. The Bloke used to make this mousse, long ago before he got so out of practice in the kitchen. One day I must make it again; I see it's been a very long time and it is very good. The key thing about the mousse that it's made purely of eggs and chocolate, and a small splash of grog. There is no cream or butter or anything else filling it out, although a bit of cream is good to have with it.

And we tried to go out for brunch, but it was Fathers' Day and our preferred Cherrybrook cafe was running a fixed menu, which was excessive for us. We shared a pretty decent pizza next door instead. While we were in the shopping centre, I also visited the kitchenware shop and the lovely deli. I bought some fabulous pistachio & amaretto stuffed dates at the deli - not cheap at $2.60 each, but they are large and very well-stuffed. The Bloke's Mum gave me a very fabulous early birthday present which came from that very kitchenware shop. But I am not going to show it here, or even play with it, until closer to time. Three weeks to go!

Three at once

So I've risen from the sickbed, considerably improved but still not feeling overly creative or energetic. In an attempt to save work, I've got going on three at once. To the rear, looking quite orange, we have a keema, made with much less effort than the one in the link. It has 350g lean beef mince, a tin of tomatoes, garlic, ginger and some of a jar of Patak's Madras paste. There will be frozen peas to finish. We can have it on Monday with some leftover rice, naan and dahl from our dinner out yesterday.

And to the front, in more purple tones, we have a bolognese sauce, with mushrooms, zucchini and quite a bit of leftover wine that wasn't stored well enough to drink. It's two bottle ends, a shiraz and a tempranillo. It has the other 350g lean beef mince from the packet, and alos some onion and garlic and herbs. The bloke is actually quite keen on mince, so two mince based dishes in a week are quite fine by him.

And I set some of the mushrooms and onion aside to do a quick tossed together pasta tonight. One of those ones where you cook the pasta, then mix all the bits through rather than making a separate sauce. It's going to be sort of a carbonara, with egg and ham and Poacher's Pantry smoked tomatoes.

While I was making the bolognese, I tried a comparison. I used two tins of chopped tomatoes, one Woolworths' Select and one Home Brand. There was very little difference in colour or taste. There is a consistency difference: for 30c more, you get a slightly thicker product. The juice was a little runnier in the Home Brand kind, but not very much. I think Home Brand comes out better value for money.