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...

Dhal Panchphoran

Perhaps feeling in need of some healthy food, the bloke requested lentils. Tonight's dinner was a gentle dhal, with some brown basmati rice, chopped cucumber & tomato, yoghurt and chutney, and a few slivers of cold meat. This dhal is a favourite of mine; I make it quite often. It's from a Madhur Jaffrey book, but of course a little altered.

Recipe: Dhal Phanchporan
180g red lentils
1 large onion, sliced into fine half rings
2 large cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
3 to 6 oven roasted tomatoes.
1 tsp salt
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 whole dried long red chillies, crumbled roughly
1 tsp panchphoran
Skin and chop tomatoes roughly, measure volume and make up to 1 litre with water. Put lentils, turmeric, garlic and half the onion in a lidded saucepan, with the tomatoes and water. Bring to a boil, and skim any scum. Reduce heat and simmer covered for 45 minutes or until lentils are well done. Strain off any excess liquid, add salt, and mash well with a potato masher.

In a small pan, heat the oil very hot. Add the panchphoron and the chillies, stir for 30 seconds or so, then add the remaining onion. Reduce heat and fry gently for 5-10 minutes, until the onion turns reddish brown. When this is ready, pour this as a topping over the dhal. Serve immediately.

Notes: the original recipe is even simpler - all water, no tomatoes, and no garlic. If I have no roast tomatoes on hand, a standard tin of tomatoes will do. Panchphoron is "five spices" - a mixture available from Indian grocery shops. You can make your own with equal proportions of whole cumin, fennel, mustard, fenugreek and nigella (kalonji) seeds.

No-knead Bread

Make this! It's amazing!

This recipe was first given to me on a message board that I no longer frequent, by a poster with the nick of B_Cereus, but it's been around. Apparently it originally came from a New York bakery, and spread via the New York Times out on to the internet to mutate and evolve. It worked for me first time and every time since, but in case you have problems, have a look at Clotilde at C&Z. She tried it out with problematic success, but persevered until she got it right. Or you could check Jaden's blog - with photos at each stage.

My version of the recipe seems to have slightly morphed from the original, but it works! The bread is excellent - it has a golden crust and a chewy open crumb, reminiscent of good Italian bread.

No-Knead Bread
3 cups bread flour
400mls lukewarm water
1 sachet dry yeast (7g)
1 scant teaspoon salt
1 scant teaspoon sugar
about 1/4 cup extra flour, to coat

Mix all into a loose dough in a bowl. Cover with gladwrap and leave to rise for 18-24 hours. Turn out onto a well-floured surface that you can pick up later - I use a silicone baking mat - and fold over in three to make a rough loaf shape. It will be very soft and loose. Turn seam side down. Sprinkle flour over surface, cover with gladwrap, and let rise for another 2-3 hours. The dough should double in size, or a bit more, and will not bounce back easily if you poke it.

Place a large covered casserole dish in the oven, and pre-heat to 220C. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. (It's hot!) Sprinkle some more flour into the pot. Pick up the dough by holding under the mat and flop it over into the casserole dish, so it lands seam side up. Shake pan once or twice to distribute dough more evenly, if necessary.

Cover pot with lid and bake for 30 minutes. Then remove lid and bake for another 15 minutes, or until loaf is nicely browned.

Notes: I use an enamelled cast iron casserole dish, but the recipe I got it from said ceramic or pyrex is OK too. Also there was a suggestion to replace a cup of the white flour with wholemeal and add stuff if you want, but I've never tried this. And you can use some cornmeal instead of the flour for the coating stage.

Pressies & Puddin'

People seem to have me pegged. I have 2 microplane graters and a travel coffee plunger from the bloke; a charity cookbook and a set of cheese knives with Tasmanian sassafras handles from his Mum. And I bought the icecream maker and Maggie's Harvest (a mammoth tome by Maggie Beer) with money from my Mum, so I think that counts as a foodie present, too.

I haven't cooked much. We had Xmas lunch at my mate Jon's place - an extraordinary cold collation of roast goose, ham, cured beef, two kinds of duck pies, a cheese and mushroom pie, and assorted salads, followed up with pudding, chocolate truffles, shortbreads and more. Everything was home made or cured by Jon and his family, except for the ham and a panettone. He's a great cook, but of course the trouble with going out for Xmas is the lack of leftovers for snacking on in the next week. To alleviate this problem, I bought a large hunk of pre-cooked turkey breast from the supermarket, and made a tray of sage and onion stuffing. I also bought a Maggie Beer pudding and made a frozen brandy cream to go with it, and I made a summer pudding with red currants from my mate Beth's garden and some frozen mixed berries. I intend to do a ham for January, with luck I can get a nice one on sale.

Today we nibbled on the turkey and the summer pudding. Summer pudding is an amazing substance; how could soggy bread be so delicious? It comes out fresh, light and fruity - dollop on some cream and it's heaven, or try it with a good yoghurt for a decadent yet not too heavy holiday breakfast. My recipe is adapted from Stephanie Alexander's.


Recipe: Summer Pudding

1/2 loaf good quality sliced white bread
200g fresh red currants
300g frozen raspberries
300g frozen mixed berries
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons vanilla vodka
Heat the sugar and water in a saucepan large enough to hold all the berries. When it is thoroughly dissolved, add the frozen berries and warm through. Add fresh berries and simmer for another 30 seconds, then leave to cool. Add the vodka, stir well, then drain off and keep the liquid.

Cut the crusts off the bread, dunk each piece in the liquid and line a pudding bowl. Toss in the berries, and top with more soaked bread. Put a plate on top of the pudding, and a weight on top of the plate, and refrigerate overnight. Unmould and serve.

Notes: Well, this is as I made it, but it is a very flexible recipe. Use wholemeal bread or brioche - but not multigrain, it needs to be smooth. Use vanilla vodka or Grand Marnier or creme de cassis or what you will. Use more or less fresh or frozen fruit. Drizzle a little more vodka over the base if you run out of berry juices.

Xmas Breakfast Eggs

Today's Breakfast Menu:
Irish coffee, made with Laphroaig
Xmas scrambled eggs with grainy seedy toast
A chocolate or two. Or three. (Lindt ball? Guylian shell? Decisions, decisions.)

Recipe: Xmas Scrambled Eggs
6 eggs
2 tablespoons cream
3 eyes of bacon, pre-cooked & sliced in fine strips (optional)
6 large sundried tomatoes (the softish kind), sliced in fine strips
2 teaspoons real pesto, extended with a tiny bit of olive oil if it's not runny enough to drizzle.
15g butter
Toast of choice

Beat eggs with cream. Melt butter on a gentle heat. Toss eggs in and scramble SLOWLY, over the lowest heat you can manage. Add bacon and sundried tomato strips during the scrambling.

Serve with toast. Drizzle pesto over the top so you have green & red Xmassy colour to your eggs, as well as yumminess. Serves 2.

Cake or Death?

I'm hungover, so I lean toward Death as an option. Owwww.

The cake in question is actually really nice, to my slight surprise. It's low fat, and has no sugar. I got it from an issue of Australian Healthy Food Guide, the only food magazine which comes with a bibliography. It's packed with references to academic medical and nutritional journals. This recipe was sent in by a reader (Margaret Petch), and then I modified it some more to suit my tastes.


Recipe: Pumpkin Fruit Cake
125g raisins
125g currants
125g chopped dried apricot
125g mixed peel
1 tablespoon honey
2/3 cup brandy
1/3 cup amaretto
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 cup cold mashed pumpkin
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch ground cloves
2 tablespoons brandy, extra
Preheat oven to 180C. Line 20cm round tin with baking paper.
Put dried fruit, honey,brandy, amaretto in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer.
Remove from heat, add bicarbonate of soda and stir well.
Leave to cool.
When cool, mix in mashed pumpkin and eggs.
Gently fold flour and spices through the mixture
Bake for 45 minutes or until done.
Remove from oven and brush with extra brandy.

Notes: I used butternut pumpkin. The original recipe had apple juice rather than brandy, and a longer baking time. My oven is really fast, though. Also, I like currants more than sultanas.

Oh, OK, I choose cake.

Icecream and Iron Chef

Ah, winding down. Since I last wrote I've made a chocolate sorbet - late on Thursday night, after choir practice. And I've made a fruitcake, shopped, and been to Sydney, had dinner at Belmondo, and come back again and rustled up a quick mini lamb roast dinner. And now I'm on the couch, watching Iron Chef, with my dessert: a scoop each of the sorbet, and Gundowring honey walnut icecream. Bliss. There's only one more day of obligations - tomorrow I have a choir carolling gig, after which we are hosting a cocktail party - and then there's nothing to do but sloth about as I please. It's strange this year; we're having Xmas at home with no relatives and no specific cooking plans. I keep thinking that I must have forgotten something.

The new KitchenAid ice cream attachment is great. It's good having a whole freezer bowl, not just a disc in the bottom. The mix freezes up quickly to a great soft serve texture, then it's off to the freezer to mature overnight. Although I did have some at the soft serve stage - at which point I discovered that I hadn't let the chopped chocolate melt quite enough before chilling the mix. It's rich and intense, as promised, but also it's just slightly granular. Since the grain is only chocolate, it does melt in your mouth, so no big drama. My sorbet is merely slightly short of perfection. Obviously I have to practice some more...

Dinner at Belmondo was nice. The location and view is terrific, the food and drink is pretty good, the service was a bit slipshod and slow, but mostly OK. I got to see fireworks over the harbour as I sat by the window. I had a spaghetti vongole entree - excellent pasta, with lovely buttery juices, but the clams were a bit gritty. The roast duck was very well done, falling off the bone tender, with a rich port jus. And the honey torrone dessert with figs was nice, but tonight's Gundowring ice cream wins. I was cheerful though, with a cocktail and a few glasses of wine in me, and good food that I wasn't paying for. It's a little sad seeing all the Good Food awards and chef's hat certificates and so on lining the wall on the way to the toilets. They all date around 1997 - 2001 - back in the days when it was Stefano Manfredi's family restaurant. Perhaps it's not such a great idea to keep them there.

Back to the kitchen

A night at home at last. After a couple of days of finger food - the Slow Food party, a work drinkies, and a music studio concert and nibbles - it was good to have a real meal of meat, potatoes and veggies. I made quick baked potatoes, defrosted the last of the grillade, and steamed some broccoli and asparagus in the microwave. I also took the opportunity to put last week's tomatoes on to roast, and make the base mix for the chocolate sorbet that I plan to make tomorrow.

Slow Food in Canberra

I got back from the Slow Food Canberra Xmas party at Majura Winery - riding with some trepidation down their gravel drive with several kangaroos on either side - and realised I'd forgotten to tape Mythbusters. And it was the Pirate episode, too. Bugger.

Well, it was a very pleasant evening anyway. I sampled Minto Galloway beef sausages and meatballs; Cypress Valley smoked rainbow trout, Holmlea olives, Tallabung ham, and Kim de Poorter's terrines and rillettes, as well as an assortment of other finger food, bread, fruit, cheese, nuts and so on. I would have sampled the wine, too, but I was riding at dusk and thought I'd better keep my wits about me. All of the products I named are local, and sold through the EPIC growers' market. The ham and beef are organic free range products, and excellent. The ham was brilliant. Baked with a whisky and marmalade glaze by umm, some bloke in the group, it was moist and juicy. With no nitrates, it lacked the chemical tang of the supermarket cheapies. I want one, to do up with the Bloke's Mum's Guinness and cardamom glaze, but I don't think I can get to the market before Xmas. Bother!


This was my first outing to a Slow Food event, and I intend to join up. The people seem friendly, and there's a mix of ages and types - some growers and producers, some chefs, and plenty of ordinary people like me, who are just interested in food and not professionals at all. They also like to wear funny hats, which is another plus. I can't wait to unleash my chicken hat on them. I am a little nervous, though. I've told a couple of people that I have a blog, so I might get more readers... Will they like me? Oh, the anxiety! Melodramatic pose!

I am very much in favour of the Slow Food philosophy. It's not just about buying and eating good food, but about promoting biodiversity, and resisting the mass market degradation of our food supplies. Here is their philosophy statement from the main international site:

We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible. Our movement is founded upon this concept of eco-gastronomy – a recognition of the strong connections between plate and planet.

Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.

We consider ourselves co-producers, not consumers, because by being informed about how our food is produced and actively supporting those who produce it, we become a part of and a partner in the production process.

That works for me! Sign me up, folks!

Saucy Shows

After a big week of conference organising, what better to wind down with than a few drinks and some naughty shows. We saw Miss Kitka's House of Burlesque present "A Night at the Pink Flamingo", and Masters of Space and Time (what a name!) present "Saucy Panto". What fun!

Miss Kitka's group is an amateur troupe, with some seriously good singers and dancers, as well as some not so good... But it's all a great romp, and the amateur parts only add to the charm. I love this because it's not slick mass produced stuff - there are bodies of all shapes, ages and genders. Very cool.

This show was a pisstake of the sleazy 50s casino. A pair of drunken ratpack crooners hosted, showgirls in corsets and pink feathers strutted around, there was singing and dancing and comedy and stripping, sometimes all at once. This show was at the Casino, in an upstairs room that has clearly seen better days. Bad astronomical paintings represented its Galaxy nightclub phase; the bar seemed more confusedly tropical with sombreros and hula skirts. And we had plastic glasses for our G&T! Very tacky indeed. It would have been perfect for the show, if the space had been smaller. The audience was rather swimming in it, though we gamely pulled our tables to the front and pretended. I felt all conspiratorial and part of the act, and I had a hugely fun time. Look out next year for a world war two themed show, and I hear rumour of a fairytale one.

The next day I saw the Saucy Panto the Street Theatre. It was in theatre 2, which I think is the smallest theatre I've ever been in. Even the Gorman House youth theatre space is bigger. The show was a hoot; chock full of stereotypes and all the in-you-end-oh you could wish for in a panto. It's not a traditional fairy tale; though there are some good Cinderella bits. The story concerns an evil club manager who is trying to put on the best show to outdo his rivals. He is thwarted by a sexy accountant, and ripped off by the performers - the Lord of Misrule as a TV show host, with his bearded Dame wife, and two creepy murderous daughters. Their put-upon plucky stepdaughter of course finds true lurve with the principal boy, who is the curiously buxom and high-voiced "son" of the would-be sinner vicar. A puppet elf, oddly named Winky, not Wanky, supplies commentary, love potions and other plot devices. The set was very simple but well-dressed; a clever gigantic Xmas parcel box featured in the action.

The troupe performing there were young professionals, and they were all terrific. The Lord (Arran McKenna) was a dervish-like force of nature, vile, gluttonous and hilarious. David Clapham strode about in terrible drag as the Dame, full of charisma like a young Bill Oddie. He's a multi-talented bloke; he was also a director and designer. If I had to name a flaw, the script's little framing lectures delivered by the puppet-master seemed a bit condescending and redundant. I was at a panto, not a lecture, thank you. The puppet's constant wanking was overdone - yes, it was clever, but all the time? And the bar was closed at interval! What a terrible shock! I was all set to buy a pint of gin, as advertised in the program.