It Aten't Dead

One week on and I still haven't killed it. Though the butter lettuce and rocket are looking alarmingly limp. Let us hope that today's feed and water picks them up.

This is a home hydroponics box from hydropantry, that I bought at the EPIC market last week. It is nifty. You put it in a frost-sheltered but sunny spot, and change the water once a week. Add 40ml of nutrient solution, and it's done until next week. You pick what you want from it as you go.

There are three kinds of lettuce in my planter, plus rocket, spring onions, curly parsley, continental parsley and coriander. We've used some of the red and cos lettuce already. It seems to be doing OK so far, just sitting on the table on the back deck. I think it's quite picturesque - adds a nice dash of green.

When you change the solution, you can put the old water on the garden. It's nice and clean, not smelly like the water from a week long neglected flower vase would be. Which makes sense when you think about it, since there's live roots hanging in there, not cut stems. I used the first batch of leftover water on my new cherry tree, which I am still excited about.

The garden is starting to look spring-like already. It's pretty in the sunshine, even if not exactly warm: the prunus is budding, and bulbs are sprouting among the hellebores and violets and cyclamens down the side that we've paved recently. And the wattle is starting to flower. Alice the wonder-gardener has pruned the trickier things for me and instructed me to feed the citrus. I'd better go do that while I remember.

Fake Rojak

We've just had a cheat's dinner. Charmaine Solomon rendang paste, made into a curry with diced wallaby rump (from Eco meats) and some cauliflower. Rice, and salad, and a glass of beer. Good stuff and dead easy. The curry is trivial: mix tin of coconut milk into jar of paste, add meat and simmer until done. I added the cauliflower as part of my regular policy of increasing vegetable content.

The salad is inspired by the Indonesian rojak, but is missing the important traditional note of the shrimp paste. I'm not mad keen on it, and the bloke dislikes it. It's also a haphazard thing, with cashews where you might expect peanuts, and lime juice. I'd have added jicama or daikon if I had any, but I didn't. It worked very nicely, though. The idea is that it's a fresh, contrasting accompaniment to a rich curry: cold and hot; sweet, salt and sour.

Recipe: Fake Rojak
1 small tin pineapple chunks, drained
1 large lebanese cucumber
1 medium wedge rockmelon
2 tablespoons chopped salted cashews
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
1 teaspoon chilli paste
1 teaspoon finely grated palm sugar
small pinch of salt
juice of half a lime
Peel and chop the lebanese cucumber in small dice, a bit smaller than the pineapple chunks. Chop the rockmelon the same. Mix the fruit and cucumber together.

Mix the tamarind, chilli, salt and palm sugar together. Thin with the lime juice. Pour dressing over the salad and mix well. Let stand for half an hour. Add chopped nuts just before serving.

Notes: Seed the cucumber if you wish, though with lebanese or telegraph cukes the seeds are soft and I don't bother. If you like shimp paste, add it - or some powdered dried shrimp. You might then need less salt - it's a matter of taste. Other fruits can be used - star fruit, mango or even fresh pineapple instead of tinned :)

Classic Chicken Cacciatore

Yay! Cooking again. I'm planning reheatable things, because of the constant business of evening rehearsals and events. Last week was a total no-show on the cooking, except for some roasting of tomatoes, another kilo of rhubarb from the garden, and a few old beetroots.

And they weren't even my beetroots - B1 gave them to me when she went off to Adelaide for a week. They did come in handy: sliced up and sprinkled with white balsamic, they made an excellent salad with some mixed leaves (mostly spinach), brown "kumatoes", and Dutch semi-hard goats cheese. Toss over an extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice dressing, serve with a bit of bread and butter and it's a good lunch. Is that cooking? Mmmm, I guess it wasn't a total non-event, then.

I was out to dinner last night, and the conversation turned to cooking skills, and the ability to look in a fridge and produce a meal from whatever's there. So this morning I felt obliged to live up to my words, and use some things up. Zucchini from the garden (and two from B1's, damn her), the roasted tomatoes, some olives, a cup or so of flat pink champagne, a few bits of salad... It sort of said "Italian" to me, and I started thinking chicken cacciatore.

With that in mind, I toddled off to market with B1, only to find that preparation for the show has shoved them off site and without electricity. No coffee! The horror! I grabbed a couple of necessities - new season apples, blackberries, tomatoes - and then headed for Belco. Beppe's coffee and berry pancakes restored my sanity, and I was able to buy all the things I thought I needed: mushrooms, fresh basil, and chicken. I had a bit of fun at the Market Gourmet chicken shop watching Dave helpfully joint a couple of chooks for me, in between training a new boy in important life lessons such as "Never get in the way of a man with a knife".

When I got home, I turned to the great Italian classic cookbook, Il Cucchiaio d'Argento, in a quest for authenticity. I was quite surprised to read the recipe. It was not what I thought it would be...

Recipe: Pollo Alla Cacciatora
1 chicken, jointed
25g butter
3 tblsp olive oil
1 onion
6 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery stick, chopped
150ml water
1 flat leaf parsely sprig, chopped
salt & pepper

Brown chicken and onion in the oil and butter, stirring frequently.
Add tomato, carrot, celery and water.
Simmer 45 minutes, or until chicken is tender.
Add parsley, salt and pepper to taste before serving.

Notes: Well, how simple is that? Note the complete absence of olives, mushrooms, capsicum, zucchini, stock, wine, basil, oregano, bayleaves and even garlic! The book does say that this is the simplest version, and in some regions white wine or stock may be used, or sliced mushrooms added. But 90% of the recipes you find on the web include a lot more ingredients and a lot more fuss.

My version so far this time is quite simple. I've used a lot less fat, and the legs and thighs of the two chickens. I also used the roast tomatoes (not seeded, I can never be bothered with that) and 200g sliced flat mushrooms. The flat champagne went in instead of water, and I've added a couple of bayleaves. I have not used carrot or celery. I don't like carrots in this, and the bloke avoids celery if it's not very well disguised. I may add some fresh basil at the end, just because I have it and it is delicious. Maybe some olives, too. Authenticity, schmauthenticity.

The rest of the chickens is being used separately. I've frozen the breasts for later use in stirfries or grills, and popped the frames in a stockpot with the rest of the champers, plus water, bayleaves, an onion and a carrot to make stock. Also on the stove is a recipe-less ratatouille: onion, zucchini, mushroom, eggplant, tomato, bayleaf. I intend to add fresh basil later. I've left out the usual garlic, because I suspect that some antibiotics are giving me a heightened allium sensitivity. Bugger.

I also have some wallaby rump defrosting, which I intend to curry extremely simply by using a Charmaine Solomon rendang paste that took my fancy in the Food Lovers shop. Three things simmering away at once, and another started, that feels better!

Beef Week

Last week was chicken, this week was beef. We've had cheeseburgers with the Minto Galloway mince, and I roasted the 1.5kg hunk of silverside to medium rare. We had it as a hot roast dinner one night, with some roast potatoes, pumpkin and steamed beans, and a dab of horseradish. But mostly we've been eating it cold. With this hot weather, a salad is perfect, and I've been making Thai-inspired ones.

The one in the picture has mixed greens, coriander, mint, spring onion, capsicum, radish, cucumber and tomato, with a sprinkle of cashews on top - and plenty of rare roast beef. I did one with avocado and some of the cold roast pumpkin, too. The dressing is a standard for me, but so far I only seem to have posted two variants.

The salad dressing recipes are very simple, but the proportions really are a matter of taste. It's lime juice, fish sauce, and grated palm sugar - with sesame oil and chilli as the optional extras. The sesame oil is not traditional in Thai salads, but it works beautifully. Use fresh lime juice if possible, or a good preserved one like the Lime Grove juice cordial. If you don't have palm sugar, you can use jaggery, coconut sugar, or just a dark brown sugar. Use dried chilli flakes, fresh chilli shreds or a dab of sambal oelek. Make your own personal blend of sweet, sharp, salt and hot.

I think the coriander, mint and green onion are essential to this dish. Without them, I would choose some other salad dressing. I've been thinking of trying a more European style, perhaps with parsley, beetroot, red onion, horseradish and shavings of manchego or parmesan. There's still enough beef left for one more salad...

Of Lollies and Cake and BBQ Lamb

I'm back again. We spent a few days in Sydney at the Bloke's Mum's place, where we had a quiet and pleasant Xmas and no internet. Moira made her signature ham, baked in Guinness - the best ham ever, if you ask me. We had that for Xmas lunch, and prawns & veg & turkey, and we finished off with a "Pudding Lady" pud with Moira's homemade brandy icecream. And a nap.

For our contribution, we bought the ham for Moira to cook, and I added a jar of "Ham Jam" and a dozen mince pies from the gourmet food place at Belco markets. The "jam" was very good - a spicy cherry relish. I also took some cherries, and a hunk of my Xmas cake, a bit spruced up with glace fruit and a bauble. The fruit is glued on and glazed with apricot jam, sieved and thinned with a little brandy. You warm it up to a liquid, then paint on a layer to the cake, add the fruit, and brush it with more glaze.

Today we had a couple of friends round for lunch. I had a butterfly leg of lamb in a Greek marinade from Meatways, so I decided to cook that on the BBQ, and throw together a couple of salads. These were a simple bean salad, and a Greek salad. The bean salad is a standard: just a tin of mixed beans, some cooked fresh green beans, blanched red onion, and an oil & vinegar dressing. This time I added some strips of sun dried tomato. The Greek salad was a mix of tomato, cucumber, onion, capsicum, fetta cheese and kalamata olives, with a herb and lemon dressing.

We finished off with a lovely refreshing green apple sorbet and shortbread biscuits, made by Helen. I'll have to ask her for the recipe, but the trick was that the apple is not cooked at all, simply frozen and then minced finely in the food processor. The resulting sorbet is a little bit granular, since the apple can't be made totally smooth. It comes out somewhere between sorbet and granita - really brilliant on a hot summer afternoon.

For no good reason, I had been thinking for a while of making some honeycomb toffee. I finally decided to do it this evening after our guests had gone home. I hardly ever make sweets, but it's Xmas season, so why not? It only takes about ten minutes. If you want to make your own hokeypokey icecream, this is the stuff to use.

Recipes follow.
Recipe 1: Cake Glaze
2 tablespoons apricot jam
2 teaspoons brandy
Sieve the jam to get rid of any large chunks. Put it into a small glass or jar, and add the brandy. Heat in the microwave for 30 seconds, or until boiling. Stir well. Brush onto cake, to use as glue for decorations. Apply a second layer over the fruit. Reheat for 10 seconds to re-liquefy, any time you need.

Recipe 2: Greek Salad Dressing
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
2 cloves garlic
50 ml lemon juice
25 ml good olive oil
small pinch salt
Peel the garlic cloves and partially crush with a knife blade, so that they stay mostly whole. Put everything in a small glass jar, shake well and leave for 3 hours before using. Remove garlic before adding to salad.

Recipe 3: Honeycomb Toffee
200g sugar
50ml water
1 tablespoon golden syrup
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda, sieved.
light vegetable oil for greasing tin
Put sugar, water and golden syrup in a large saucepan. Bring to boil, and continue boiling to "hard crack" stage. This is when a drop of the sugar mix, tipped in a glass of cold water, sets to hard filaments as it sinks. If you have a sugar thermometer, that's 150C. Remove from heat and toss in the carb soda. It will foam up a lot. Stir quickly and tip into an oiled cake tin to set. If you want neatish cubes, use a square tin, and score with an oiled knife when partly set. Or just break it up in shards, as I have.

Silly Hat Day BBQ & Cake

I've been meaning to post this for a few days now, but I've mislaid my USB card reader for my camera. So here it is without pictures. I'll add them in later. (Later: not found, but replaced. The cats must have hidden it. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

Last Tuesday was a public holiday here, and we hosted a small BBQ party. I made a couple of salads and a couple of desserts, and our friends brought bread, and more cake, and things to cook on the BBQ. In honour of the day I wore my chicken hat. For a little while, anyway. We made up a sweepstake, and went inside to yell at the horsies for a few minutes around 3 o'clock. All of mine lost, chiz chiz. But apart from that, it was a lovely day.

I made a potato salad and a silverbeet salad, and we barbecued lots of mushrooms, and some saltbush lamb sausages and steaks. For desserts or afternoon tea we had Robyn's mini muffins, Sandra's moist lemon cake, a raspberry spice cake, and the wattleseed pavlova that I described in my last post. People were trying to guess the flavour, and coffee was the most common pick. It was pretty good, though it came out more chewy and less crisp than I'd intended. I had been pretty slack about monitoring the oven temperature and time, so this surprise result was, well, really not a surprise. The raspberry spice cake was very successful. Read on for the recipes.




Recipe 1: Potato Salad
1 kg small new potatoes
1/2 red onion
3 hardboiled eggs
2 teaspoons chopped fresh tarragon
2 teaspoons seeded mustard
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
watercress to garnish
Boil the potatoes whole, in their skins, for about 20 minutes or until done. Drain and cut into large chunks.
Meanwhile, chop the onion finely, and blanch it for 30 seconds in boiling water.
Mix onion with mayo, mustard, tarragon and vinegar in a large bowl.
Add the hot potato chunks to the dressing and stir gently to coat.
Stir through chopped hard boiled egg.
Refrigerate, and garnish with watercress when cold.

Notes:Like all salad recipes, this is flexible! And here is the evidence: another version, that I forgot that I'd written up before.

I'd have liked to use tarragon vinegar, but I didn't have any. Lemon juice and dill would work very well instead of vinegar and tarragon. You don't have to blanch the onion, if you prefer a stronger flavour. Light or whole mayo works, or a blend. Oh, and special thanks to Fiona's chooks for the eggs.


Recipe 2: Silverbeet & Orange Salad
1 bunch silverbeet
4 medium oranges
1/4 medium red onion
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 tablespoons fruity olive oil
pinch salt
Wash the silverbeet, and trim it by cutting off the stems at the base of the leaf. Pick over, and save largest outer leaves for cooking if they're a bit imperfect.
Shred the good leaves and place in your salad bowl.
Slice the onion finely, and add to bowl.
Peel and slice 3 of the oranges, discarding seeds. Add orange slices to bowl.
Toast the pine nuts, and add them.
Juice the last orange.
In a small jar, mix 2 tablespoons of the juice with the olive oil and a small pinch of salt. Shake vigorously, and pour over salad at serving time.

Notes: Just drink the leftover orange juice, OK? To toast pine nuts, you can put them in the oven, or in a dry frying pan, but you can also microwave them. Place on a saucer, and nuke on high setting for a minute. Stir them, and continue to heat in 30 second bursts until they brown.


Recipe 3: Raspberry Spice Cake
450 ml self-raising flour
300 ml brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
250 ml raspberries
2 eggs
200 ml cream
50 ml melted butter
50 ml sunflower oil
Preheat the oven to 160C.
Butter and flour a 25cm cake tin.
Mix all the dry ingredients, except fruit, in a large bowl.
Melt the butter, combine with the oil and cream.
Beat the eggs together in a small bowl, then mix in the butter, oil and cream mixture.
Add the wet mix and the raspberries to the dry mix, and stir well to combine.
Dollop into the cake tin, and bake for an hour, or until done when tested with a skewer.


Notes: this is a fairly thick mix, and the fruit stays nicely suspended instead of sinking to the bottom. I found the recipe when browsing some US election blogs and following odd links. Mine is different from the original, in that I used whole frozen raspberries instead of mashed cranberries, and swapped some spices (2 tsp ground cloves? Srsly? I don't think so!) Also I misread a couple of lines, and used ten times more cream and butter than I was supposed to. But this recipe here is what I actually did, and it worked well. Here's the original: search the page for "cake" and it's the second match.

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.

Hot Asian Stuff

Four Rivers in Dickson does a very nice yum cha, even if their Szechuan food is blanded out to ridiculous extents. OK, so yum cha isn't usually very fiery, but we did go through a lot of chilli sauce with our dumplings.

Cooking Coordinates in the Belconnen Market is a nice place to browse for kitchen equipment. There's a nice range of toys equipment from Kitchenaids to silicone spatulas; a lot of cake decorating supplies; and you can rent large odd shaped cake tins, should you ever be in need of a Thomas the Tank Engine cake, or a giant loveheart, or even a cup cake stand. They also stock a small range of gourmet ingredients, including Herbie's spices.

They usually have some sort of demo or class on the weekends, in their little kitchen theatre out the back. Pick up a flyer and book ahead. Last Saturday, Kate McGhie did a Thai cooking demo and I went along with Belinda. We got demos, samples and recipes for a terrific meal - ma hor, a crab salad, a divine pork and tamarind curry, a chicken cooked in lemongrass, and a coconut pandan icecream. I intend to make the pork and tamarind curry sometime soon. Interestingly, it was served on shredded cabbage, not rice. Very good. The chicken was rather less successful - something went wrong and the room was filled with smoke. Oops. I'm fairly sure that wasn't supposed to happen.

So of course I had to make Thai food this week, even though I'd already shopped and didn't have all the ingredients. I ended up making a red curry of prawns, with green beans, bamboo shoots and pineapple - fruit is quite traditional in a red curry, but no other colour, I believe. I also made a coriander salad to have on the side -very inauthentic, but it worked really well, so I'll write up the recipe.

Recipe: Thai-ish Side Salad
1 bunch coriander, leaves only - save the roots, though
2 large spring onions, sliced on the diagonal
1/2 red capsicum, chopped to julienne shreds
1/2 lebanese cucumber, chopped (optional)
1 cup shredded iceberg lettuce
Dressing:
the coriander roots, scrubbed and pounded in a mortar & pestle
1/2 tsp sambal oelek
1/2 tsp mint paste
1 tsp palm sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
juice of half a lime
Mix the dressing well. Taste and adjust for preference. Mix all the salad vegetables together, and stir in the dressing.

Notes: Serve as a side dish with a rich coconut-based curry. It's a very refreshing contrast. I have the cucumber on the side, because The Bloke doesn't like it. I'd prefer to have fresh mint leaves, but the supermarket "herbs in a toothpaste tube" mint was all I had. I thought it worked quite well as an addition to the dressing.

You should definitely taste and adjust the dressing to your own taste. Kate pointed out that Thai food works on balancing sweet, sour, salty and hot, and the salad should have all of those elements. Palm sugar, lime, fish sauce and chilli are the basic notes.

Mexican Fiesta

Quite often after I eat out, I find myself wanting to cook something similar. This time it's a Mexican/TexMex bug that bit. I'm making a lamb and black bean chilli, a jicama salad, and mango sorbet. All is actually for tomorrow night. Today we're in recovery from the party, and there's been a lot of lolling on the couch attempting to read the entire internet. In between that, I've had a few bouts of pottering in the kitchen on clean up and meal prep.

The lamb chilli is a variant on one by the Frugal Gourmet, a twinkly avuncular seeming gentleman, who hosted a cooking show in the US at the time I was living there. I bought his American cookbook back then. It seems he wasn't as nice a man as his TV persona. It doesn't pay to google celebrities you like; you may discover them embroiled in yet another church-related underage sexual abuse scandal. Oh well. The recipe is still good. It uses commercial chilli powder and is a bit vague on measurements, so I'll post my variant.

Jicama is a very nice vegetable that's not much used or known in Australia. I buy it from Saigon Grocery in Dickson. This is a wonderful shop - it's Vietnamese, but has a wide range of other Asian groceries. I love it especially for the fresh food. There's cakes and puddings up the front - all manner of interesting and colourful coconut and sweet bean concoctions. Fresh noodles and tofu are in the fridge at the back. It's most noteworthy, though, for the fresh vegetables, which arrive on Friday afternoons. They have the best and freshest beansprouts, excellent herbs and greens, Thai white eggplants, green salad papayas, and all sorts of other goodies. They have good fruit, too - this week they had fresh longans, as well as huge mangoes and a few other things. The lady at the counter was nice enough to warn me that the jicama was expensive before I bought it; and she also saved my reading glasses that I lost. I love her very much!

Anyway, jicama, or yam bean, or chinese turnip, is a native Mexican plant. Its root is usually eaten raw, in salads, salsas, or fruit plates. Lime, salt and chilli are the common condiments. It's crisp, slightly sweet, and mild in flavour. I've used three quarters of mine to make a salad, and I'll have the rest for work lunches. The salad is very simple - lime, salt, chilli, coriander and onion.

Finally, for dessert we can have Clothilde's Mango Sorbet. Only one slight variant - I only had 750g of mango flesh. I just went ahead with that, not worrying about the missing 50g of fruit. I haven't frozen it yet, so I'll have to let you know later how that worked. (Wednesday update: it worked perfectly. Very good!)

Recipe 1: Lamb and Black Bean Chilli
350g uncooked black turtle beans
500g minced lamb
1 large onion
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon whole cumin seeds
1 stick cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon loomi - dried lime powder
chilli, to taste
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1 large green capsicum
salt, to taste
juice of half a lime
Soak the beans overnight; discard water. Boil gently in fresh water for 2-3 hours, until almost tender. Set aside - they can continue to soak overnight in the cooking water.

Heat the oil in a large pot. Chop the onion, and add it, with the whole cumin seeds to the pan. Fry until onion is softened, than add crushed garlic and minced lamb. Stir well to brown lamb, then add tomatoes, worcestershire sauce and spices (NOT including salt). Add beans, and simmer gently for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally. About half an hour before serving, add chopped capsicum, lime juice, and salt to taste.

Notes: Black beans really do take a long time. In this method they are finished off in the chilli, so they soak up a bit of the flavour and meld in well. These are not Chinese black beans, which are actually fermented soybeans, but an American bean. I got mine from the Essential Ingredient in Kingston. This isn't a bright red chilli, especially if you use chopped fresh green chillies for your heat. The lime is more unusual - and that's not from the original recipe. I think I got the idea from a chilli & margarita restaurant in Manhattan, umm 20 years ago (woah, is that the time?). Maybe. Anyway, the lime and black bean combo just seems right.

Serve it with some tortillas (or pita bread), a small dollop of sour cream, and some salad. Makes lots, with plenty of handy to freeze leftovers.

Recipe 2: Jicama Salad
350g jicama
2 long mild green chillies
1 small red onion
1 lime
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander leaf
De-seed and shred the chillies into fine straws. Slice the onion into fine straws. Peel and slice the jicama into coarser straws. Mix through the salt, and zest and juice of the lime, and leave to settle for a few hours or overnight. Stir through fresh coriander shortly before serving.

Balsamic Mushroom and Bean Salad

While we're eating a lot of ham, it's good to vary the rest of the menu. Last night we had hot ham, with baked potatoes, green salad and a balsamic mushroom and bean salad. I'm just finishing the salad over lunch, with added cucumber, celery and a small tin of tuna.

Recipe: Balsamic Mushroom and Bean Salad
250g small button mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1 400g tin large white beans
1/2 loose-packed cup chopped continental parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic reduction
Drain beans well, and combine with chopped parsley in a heat-resistant bowl. Clean the mushrooms and cut in halves. Heat the oil in a small saucepan, add the crushed garlic, and fry gently until mushrooms are lightly browned. Add the balsamic reduction, stir quickly and tip onto the beans. Stir well, and leave to cool before serving.

Notes: The Italian tinned beans I used are called butter beans, but I've also seen "butter beans" refer to the small beans that you make baked beans with. It's not those. Definitely use big ones. I'll add a photo when I get home (I'm posting at lunchtime).

I have a syrupy balsamic reduction that my friend Alex made for me. If you don't have any, just add 2-3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and a pinch of sugar, and continue cooking the mushroom mix until it's reduced down.

Cooking tonight: Haven't decided. Risotto? Pizza? Okonomiyaki?

Some salads

I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed by Tetsuya, but I suppose life must go on. We've had lamb steaks marinaded in lemon, garlic and herbs. I made a bean salad. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday I ate low fat hotdogs with lots of sauerkraut. And I marinaded some chicken fillets and made a chickpea salad today.

Recipe 1: Mixed Bean Salad
200g fresh green beans
1 400g tin of mixed beans
2 large shallots
6 large sundried tomato halves (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Steam green beans until just tender; refresh in cold water immediately. Drain and rinse canned beans. Mix both lots of beans, chopped shallots and chopped sundried tomatoes in a serving bowl. Mix oil, vinegar and salt in a small jar and shake well. Pour over salad, and mix well.

Notes: I like my salad dressings very acidic; a higher proportion of oil is more traditional. That pack of sundried tomatoes I bought before Xmas is still making appearances. I think it goes rather well with the tinned beans.


Recipe 2: Caramelised Chickpea and Orange Salad
1 400g tin of chickpeas
1 medium onion
1 large orange
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon plus a teaspoon of white wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/4 teaspoon salt
Slice onion in medium coarse half rings. Blanch with boiling water, drain and sprinkle over vinegar and sumac. Leave for at least an hour to rest. Rinse and drain chickpeas; peel and slice orange, and mix in a heat resistant bowl. Heat sugar, water, salt, vinegar and chilli in a small saucepan until sugar is dissolved, then boil until caramelised to a golden brown. Tip caramel over chickpea and orange mix, and stir well. Add onion. Leave for an hour or so before serving to let the caramel toffee dissolve into the vinegar.

Notes: I wish I'd had a large bunch of continental parsley to mix with this. I had to be content with serving it on a bed of lettuce.

Happy New Year!

But first, I have to lose the hangover. Why, FSM, why? I only had some champagne. I even diluted it into pseudo-bellinis with Bundaberg Peachee. I usually don't like soft drinks, but this one isn't outrageously sweet. I've been taking it to parties as my designated driver drink.

Last night was a potluck, with lots of singing - mostly attended by choir people, of course. We were lucky with the dinner balance. Other people supplied antipasti, quiche, frittata, salad and cupcakes. I took a hot artichoke dip, and a tiramisu - recipes to follow. The dip was inspired by Beth, who served her variant at her Xmas party. She gave me the approximate recipe verbally, forgetting the quantities, so I googled and found a lot more, and made one up. I must get her real recipe soon. The tiramisu is an old standard, though I did check my Italian cookbook as a reference for quantities. People liked it a lot, yay!

I made the tiramisu first thing in the morning yesterday. I was still half asleep and whisked all 4 egg whites, though I only needed 2. So I decided to make random macaroons with the other half of the bowl. Macaroons are an extremely forgiving biscuit, in that a random recipe will almost certainly work. All you need is egg white, sugar, and ground nuts or coconut. If you vary the quantities, they'll come out flatter or rounder; crispier or chewier; moister or drier; but as long as you're happy with a surprise texture, you'll be fine. These ones came out flat, slightly moist, and chewy.


I took the tiramisu photo at the party, as I wanted to show the layers. And explained this weird action by talking about my blog. At that moment, it finally dawned on me that "the Canberra Cook" might sound rather arrogant. I'm not the only cook in Canberra, duh. As I actually meant it, my blog should be a useful resource for all you Canberra region cooks out there. Oh well, too late to change now. I just added a note to my profile, though.

I have one more recipe to add - a potato salad that I made a couple of days ago. We've been grazing this week rather than having formal meals; and in this hot weather it's nice to have salads ready in the fridge. I used a lot of tarragon - apart from the chopped leaves, the greenery garnish in the picture is yet more tarragon. I have it by the bucketload. It loves the heat, and is growing like the clappers. Tarragon is a good Canberra garden herb - while it appears to die totally in the frost, it springs back to life.


Recipe 1: Hot Artichoke Dip
1 tin artichoke hearts in water
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup grated parmesan
2 small cloves garlic
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Rinse the artichoke hearts well and squeeze dry. Chop roughly. Put everything except the paprikas into a blender and whizz until well mixed. Pour mix into an oven safe serving bowl, sprinkle the paprikas on top, and bake at 180C until warmed through and nicely browned. Serve hot, with pita chip and celery sticks for dipping.

Recipe 2: Tiramisu
450g marscapone
4 egg yolks
2 egg whites, whisked to stiff peaks
150g icing sugar
200g Italian sponge finger biscuits
200 ml strong coffee
100ml marsala, plus 2 tablespoons
100ml coffee liqueur
1/4 cup finely grated dark chocolate
Beat egg yolks and sugar until light and creamy. Mix in marscapone and 2 tablespoons marsala, and beat well until smooth. Fold in egg whites gently. Mix coffee, marsala and coffee liqueur in a shallow bowl.

Assemble tiramisu by dunking sponge fingers in the liquid for a few seconds. Make a layer of them in the serving bowl. Top with some of the cream, and repeat dunking and layering to end up with a top layer of cream. Sprinkle grated chocolate thickly over the top.

Notes: It's a good idea to do a test lay out of the biscuits in the serving bowl, just to see how many layers you will need. I had three, but if your bowl is wider and shallower so you only use two layers, then you'll need more chocolate for the top. Also, I usually top it with cocoa, but I had this new microplane grater, see...


Recipe 3: Orange Macaroons
2 egg whites, whisked.
150g almond meal
50g vanilla sugar
1/2 teaspoon Boyajian orange oil
1/8 cup candied orange peel
Mix all well. Blob onto a silicon baking sheet, allowing plenty of room to spread. Bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

Notes: It's traditional to put them on rice paper; indeed, it's essential if you don't have a silicon mat. Also, candied orange peel, as opposed to "mixed peel", is available only from specialist foodie shops. So is the classy orange oil. But macaroons are forgiving, remember.

Recipe 4: Tarragon & Mustard Potato Salad
1 kg new potatoes
3 hardboiled eggs
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon finely chopped tarragon leaves
4-6 shallots, finely chopped.
Boil potatoes until just done - about 20 minutes. Mix shallots, tarragon, mayo, vinegar and mustard in a large bowl. Toss drained potatoes into the mix while still hot, stir well. Refrigerate, and top with quartered hard boiled eggs before serving.

Notes: I like to keep the peel on the potatoes, and I really mean shallots, not spring onions. This is a very strongly flavoured salad that goes well with sausages and sauerkraut.

Cooking today: turkey risotto, and maybe a bean salad, as long as I revive enough. Vegemite toast and Berocca for 1pm breakfast...

Warm Beef Salad with Thai Dressing

A free day on the schedule at last, and I've done some shopping, some Xmas preparations, and made a nice salad for dinner. And blobbed on the couch with teh internets for a reasonable time.

The shopping was highly successful - I now have some decent wet weather pants and a new motorcycle helmet, and the house is well stocked with cherries and mangoes and assorted sandwich makings and random Xmassy ingredients that I'm sure I'll think of some use for. Glace fruit and raisins and pistachios and cranberries. Bound to be useful.

And I am getting a new icecream maker! My old one had a freezer disc that went in the bottom of the bowl, but the disc started leaking. Anti-freeze flavoured icecream seems like a Bad Idea, so that's off to the bin - it's ten years old; no replacement parts seem to be available any more. Oh well. I'm getting an attachment for the KitchenAid, and the shop said they'd have it by Wednesday. And then they rang me to say they'd found one in the back room! I'll go get it tomorrow. Clotilde's chocolate sorbet is calling to me...


This isn't a proper thai beef salad, but it shares the basic flavours.

Recipe: Warm Beef Salad with Thai Dressing
Thai Dressing
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon grated palm sugar
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes

Salad
4 cups mixed lettuce
1 large tomato
1/2 lebanese cucumber
3 spring onions
1/4 cup chopped coriander leaves (1/2 bunch)
4 tablespoons chopped mint leaves (1/4 bunch)

Extras
1/4 cup mixed roasted nuts
1 bunch asparagus (8 medium stalks)
2 lean steaks (150-200g each)

Mix all dressing ingredients well. Taste and adjust flavours as desired.
Toss all salad ingredients in a bowl.
Heat grill, cook asparagus for 2 minutes, and then cook steak to required done-ness. Rare is best! Slice thinly.
When all is ready, assemble salad: toss through dressing, then top with steak slices, asparagus and nuts.
Serves 2 as a main meal salad.

Notes: Of course this is more of a concept than a recipe to be followed exactly. Use your favourite salad vegetables and extras. Proportions are flexible. You must have mint, coriander and onion - but spanish onion or shallots will do. Some thai basil would be a nice addition. The dressing is likewise important - it's a very strong flavour base, with a mix of sweet, sour, salt and hot. But if you have no palm sugar, then jaggery or dark brown sugar will do; and fresh chilli is good to use instead of flakes.

Mince, mince, mince, mince, mince, mince, mince, mince...

... wonderful mince. </SPAM song>

I had to clean out the old fridge to get the new fridge in place. In so doing, I found a few surprises up the back of the freezer. I had some very old stuff that had to be thrown out; and I also discovered that I have so much mince in the freezer that it's ridiculous. Apparently I regularly buy a kilo when it's on special, freeze a portion, and then forget about it.

Things I threw out:

• 3 Boost smoothie bars that did not survive their time in the esky.
• A weight watchers chocolate ice cream cup. (Is it just me, or do these taste weirdly salty?)
• Some very old fish fingers.
  
• A single serve of a rabbit and bean casserole that had been in the freezer since last winter. (That's 2006, not the winter just gone.)
• And, sadly, a Poachers' Pantry smoked chicken breast. It may have been OK, but it dated to 2005. Oops.

And we're eating more mince this week.

Recipe 1: Pumpkin and potato kibbeh-topped mince
Potato layer:
750g mixed potato and pumpkin
1 medium onion, grated
1 & 1/2 cups fine burghul
2 tablespoons fresh mint, finely chopped
1/2 cup parsley, finely chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

Mince Layer:
500 g beef mince
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
1 tsp allspice
2 medium onions, sliced thinly
1 tsp olive oil

Topping:
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 tablespoons olive oil

Cook potato and pumpkin for mashing, turn into a bowl and mash. Soak the burghul in cold water for 15 minutes, then drain in a sieve. Press it down with a spoon to squeeze more water out. Add to the mash, along with the cinnamon, mint, parsley, salt, pepper and onion, and mix well.

For the mince, fry the onion in the oil until softened, but not brown. Add the mince, and stir until browned. Mix in the pomegranate molasses and the allspice.

Turn the mince mixture into a large square cake tin (25cm square) or a casserole dish. Top evenly with the potato mix; smooth surface and score surface into squares or diamonds with a knife. Sprinkle over pine nuts, pressing them down gently into the mixture. Drizzle with olive oil.

Bake at 200C until top is a nice golden brown. Eat hot or cold. Serves 6-8, so about half has gone into the freezer for another day. With luck I won't lose it until 2009...

Notes: Lamb would be more authentic than beef, really. Or maybe camel :-) This recipe is derived from The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook, by Tess Mallos - one of my oldest cookbooks; it came out in 1979 and I bought it shortly after. I'd worked that summer in a dodgy Lebanese restaurant and loved the cuisine. The original potato kibbeh recipe is vegetarian, with just onions below the kibbe mix. Traditionally kibbeh is made with lamb, so I guess this is named by analogy. (Kibbeh, Kibbe, Kibbi, there are many spellings.)

Recipe 2: Larb (Thai minced pork salad.)
2 stems lemon grass (white part only)
2 teaspoons sesame oil
500 g lean minced pork
1 teaspoon chilli paste
1/4 cup lime juice
2 teaspoons finely grated lime rind
1/3 cup fresh coriander leaves
1/4 cup small fresh mint leaves
1 small red onion, very finely sliced
1/3 cup roasted peanuts,
1/4 cup crisp fried garlic

Salad: lettuce, tomato, cucumber etc

Fry the pork, lemon grass and chilli in the sesame oil until throughly cooked, around 8 minutes. Taste for chilli, add extra if desired. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Stir in the rest of the ingredients, except the salad. Serve on top of a plate of roughly torn lettuce leaves, surrounded by tomato wedges and cucumber slices and other salad veg as desired.

Notes: I used shallots instead of garlic as that's what was in the cupboard. These are available in jars from Asian grocers. A jar of chopped lemongrass is handy to have, and sambal oelek is a good all-purpose chilli paste that I always have on hand. The meat should not be hot: serve it warm or cold as you prefer.

Chocolate and Asparagus

Not together, of course. Eww. Last night we had some friends around, and we ate pide, salads and chocolate cake. I made the salads, and Belinda made the cake, and the bloke made the martinis. A good time was had by all, featuring furniture assembly by candlelight in the Red Room, and a discussion ranging over blue lycra crab costumes, lolcats, Dita von Teese, and the correct pronunciation of Xian and Chengdu.

I liked my asparagus salad, and the cake was amazing, so herewith are the recipes. The cake looked like a magnificently crumpled ruin, archaeological more than culinary, and it hit you with chocolate richness. It's not an original recipe - she found it somewhere out on that thar intarweb thing, as you can tell from the American ingredient list. The photo must be from the net, Belinda's wasn't glazed and was more walnut-nobbly on top. A lot of sites come up when I google for the title, so I don't know who to credit.

Recipe 1: Asparagus Salad
2 bunches asparagus (15-20 spears)
100g fetta cheese
8 sundried tomatoes in oil, well drained
1 tablespoon macadamia oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Cook the asparagus as you prefer. Cool it and combine with the crumbled fetta, and the chopped tomatoes. Dress with oil and lemon. Easy.

Notes: I microwaved the asparagus, but this would be great fresh off a barbecue grill.


Recipe 2: Tunnel of Fudge cake
1 3/4 c. butter, softened
1 3/4 c. granulated sugar
6 eggs
2 c. powdered sugar
2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. cocoa
2 c. chopped walnuts

Beat butter and granulated sugar in large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually add powdered sugar, blending well. By hand, stir in flour, cocoa and walnuts until well blended.

Spoon batter into greased and floured 12 cup Bundt pan or 10 inch angel food tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 58-62 minutes. Cool upright in pan on cooling rack 1 hour. Invert onto serving plate. Cool completely. Spoon glaze over top of cake, allowing some to run down sides. Yields 16 servings.

Note: Nuts are essential for success of recipe. Because cake has soft tunnel of fudge, ordinary doneness cannot be used. Accurate oven temperature and baking time are critical. In altitudes above 3500 feet, increase flour to 2 1/4 cups plus 3 tablespoons.

GLAZE:
3/4 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. cocoa powder
1 1/2-2 tbsp. milk
Combine sugar, cocoa and milk in small bowl until well blended. Store tightly covered.

Notes: I love how this recipe is so precise. Alterations for altitude! 58-62 minutes?! 63 shall not be the count, neither count thou 57, excepting that thou then proceed to 58. 65 is right out.

Spiced Spinach

I called on my new recipe book again today, for a spinach dish to accompany the leftover meatball curry. This is a north Indian one, so I'm mixing cuisines. And then I have a totally invented tomato salad to go with it. Whatever. Fusion, man.

Silverbeet greens can substitute very successfully for spinach in most recipes, and that's what I did tonight. The stems are perfectly edible, but I removed them for this recipe . I'd leave them in for a lot of dishes, but slice them finely so they cook in the same time as the greens.

To clean spinach or silverbeet you need to wash it well in plenty of water; it can be sandy or gritty. With our water restrictions, I don't like to let all that go down the sink, so I wash it in a large bowl, which I then empty into a bucket. And then the bucket goes on to the garden. If I do this for all my veggie washing, I don't need to water the front garden. Yeah, so this is a garden tip rather than a cooking tip, but we do need to watch our water use.

And one final technique tip: a microplane grater is brilliant for grating jaggery or palm sugar. What did we do before these fabulous gadgets? And if you accidentally end up with too much jaggery, just toss it onto some natural yoghurt for a quick dessert.

Recipe 1: Spiced Spinach (Moghlai Saag)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
4 cardamom pods
2 large brown onions, halved and thinly sliced
3 cm piece fresh ginger, cut to thin sticks
1 kg spinach, thick stems removed
pinch salt
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 tsp garam masala
2 tsp lemon juice
Heat oil with fennel and cardamom in a large, heavy based pan. Fry for a couple of minutes until aromatic, then add onion and ginger. Cook on low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onions are golden brown. Add spinach, and cook until well wilted, stirring frequently. Stir in salt, chilli, garam masala and lemon juice immediately before serving.

Notes: I used silverbeet - 1kg is about two standard market bunches. I've altered the quantities a bit. A half cup of fat is not for those of us who need to lose weight. I used a mix of mustard and canola oil; the original recipe has 1/4 cup each of butter, and oil, to 3 onions and 1.5kg spinach. Lemon juice is my own addition; I think it's an improvement.

Recipe 2: Tomato & onion salad
1 large tomato, diced
3 spring onions, green and white, chopped
1 tablespoon coconut vinegar
1 teaspoon grated jaggery
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
Mix it all up. Serve.

Notes: I often do this salad with tamarind, but I'd run out. So I looked for something else for the sweet and sour effect.

A Vegetarian Feast

The Bloke actually requested vego food. Something about eating too much junk recently, it seems. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I remembered this month's Delicious recipe for zucchini fritters.

So here's the feast. We have a salad, baked pumpkin & sweet potato, drained yoghurt, cavolo nero with garlic, an eggplant stuffed with onion & roast tomato, baked mushrooms, and the zucchini fritters. Some of this is for Ron - good old Lata Ron - because there are only two of us. The eggplant didn't get touched, but the option was there, and I have lots of leftovers to eat in the next few days.

I won't post recipes for everything. The cavolo nero was boiled, drained, and pan fried with olive oil and garlic. It came out a little too dry; I must have been overenthusiastic with the draining. The mushroom were drizzled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and chopped parsley - and just 1/4 cup water to help keep them moist. The eggplant was similarly simple - fried onions & garlic & roast tomatoes. I make roast tomatoes most weeks, to use up any that didn't get eaten in salads or sandwiches.

Recipe 1. Simple cheese salad

A good handful each of rocket and baby spinach leaves.
A nice vine-ripened tomato, cut in wedges.
30g aged provolone cheese, shaved with a vegetable peeler.
Olive oil and balsamic vinegar, to taste.

Place all ingredients except oil and vinegar in a bowl, toss, and drizzle with the oil and vinegar separately. It doesn't get much simpler than this. Serves 2.

Recipe 2. Zucchini Fritters
I want to link to the Delicious recipe, but it's not online at taste.com.au yet. While searching I noticed that there are already four zucchini fritter recipes from Delicious. This month's version is flavoured with parsley, mint, onion, fetta and sumac. When taste.com.au is updated I'll link it in, promise. Here it is at last!

Cooking today: See above.