Esurientes - The Comfort Zone

The best stew for winter

2007-07-16T22:27:00.000+10:00

It's really cold. The coldest winter in a couple of years, at least. Certainly the coldest I've felt for a while, and I'm loving it...Most of the time I'm loving it. The times when I'm walking from the station to work and my feet have turned numb and my nose is aching are not the times I love it so much. But generally I've always been a cold-weather person, and I think it's partly because of the food; I love anything slow-cooked, casseroled, stewed or Germanic and over the past weeks I've been cooking up a huge pot of something meaty and wet (uhhh...) to have in the fridge for when we come home and it's dark and cold, and we're tired, hungry and perhaps prone to grabbing the first edible thing that springs to hand, which may or may not be a packet of Twisties...
This week I made coq au vin, in honour of Bastille Day, but I've also been dabbling in a spicy, paprika-laden beef & chickpea stew dolloped with yoghurt (gutsy) and an Irish stew made with pearl barley and topped with sliced potatoes that my mum thought was nice, but wasn't what she considered Irish stew (and fair enough -it did seem more of a Lancashire hot pot). But the best stew I've ever made and which gets my juices going just when I look at the photo was one I made for a few friends last winter; the Greek lamb stew from Nigella's How To Eat. Truly, I dreamt about it for weeks afterwards, and I'm going to have to give it another run this winter, especially as my brother is currently living the party life in the Greek Islands and the Greek theme is running strong.

It calls for 2.5kg of lamb shoulder cooked in a bottle of white wine (yes, white), the standard stew veggies, tinned tomatoes, oregano and small pasta shapes. I love stews with pasta cooked in them; they go soft and slurpy and absorb all the tasty liquid. But for me, the crowning glory of this dish is the mix of crumbled feta and dried oregano you scatter over your plate before serving. I love feta cheese anyway, but this was outstanding. Don't skip it. In fact, I'd double the amount - it makes the dish a bit richer, but the sharp saltiness works so well. It's also fabulous with a dribble of chilli oil over the top.
This one gets a really strong recommendation from me, but note, if you have trouble finding lamb shoulder - as we did, even at the Preston market, or are charged a what-the-f*%#?! price - as we were - an alternative one butcher suggested might be to use lamb shoulder chops, which are cheaper and much easier to find.

Tagged with stew

Fenix restaurant offer to readers!

2007-06-08T11:32:00.000+10:00

I recently started a new job at a newspaper, along with my other part-time position, so I've been a bit distracted recently, but an email yesterday from Ray Capaldi, co-proprietor and chef at Fenix in Richmond spurred me into action. Ray's been checking out the Melbourne food blogging community and discovered the review I wrote about the Desserts of The Future dinner at Fenix during the Melbourne Food & Wine festival. He left a comment on the site and emailed me to say he enjoyed reading the views of somebody on the dining floor. He's very interested in what the public who come to Fenix really think of the restaurant, the food and the hospitality and he was concerned when a few readers indicated that the prices at the restaurant were beyond their means. He wants everybody to experience the Fenix hospitality and food, so he's come up with an idea:

For all Esurientes readers he would like to offer them an exclusive offer of a 5 course degustation with wines for $85 dollars per person any night of the week except Friday or Saturday. The offer stands for all 2007 except December. Readers need to mention this offer on the phone when they book.
(nb. for those who've asked: pronunciation of the blog is Eh-zoo-RI-en-tez. ;-) Or Niki is easy to pronounce )

The 5 course tasting menu with wine is usually around $135, so this is a very generous offer from somebody genuinely interested in getting more people to experience his hospitality,
You can view some of the menus on the website. If you haven't been to Fenix before, you're in for a treat. I think it's the most adventurous and interesting food happening in Melbourne, and the venue, right on the Yarra, is stunning.

In other news, I'm going up to Woodend this weekend to perform, and next week to Sydney to check out a few restaurants: Aria, Balzac and Billy Kwongs are definites. Ray mentioned at that first Fenix dinner that the Sydney restaurant scene is firing right now, so I'm looking forward to trying it.
Also, this blog has been nominated (along with many others) for a Bloggers Choice award, in the Food blog category. You can cast your votes here!

Homemade peanut butter cups

2007-04-24T16:34:00.000+10:00

These should come with a health warning. There is truly nothing nutritious contained inside, just peanut butter, sugar, butter & chocolate, but f%*@$ they're SO DAMN good!!!
Like many people I'd eyed off the chocolate peanut butter squares in Nigella's Domestic Goddess for years, savouring the idea of making homespun Reese's peanut butter cups, but when I saw her Christmas special last year, and noted she'd changed the idea slightly so they were served in individual mini-muffin cases, I was hooked. When planning food for my 30th drinks party, these were high on the list.

They're as simple to make as chocolate crackles, and don't involve any cooking except for heating up some chocolate, which in typical fashion, I stuffed up. I usually ignore calls for melting chocolate over a double boiler because it's annoying and I don't have a double boiler. I find my heavy Le Creuset pot on low heat works fine. This time, the cooking fairies had their revenge, and the chocolate seized within 30 seconds. It could have been because I chose to use eating chocolate rather than cooking chocolate, and it's more temperamental anyway. But I learnt my lesson, and although I persevered with dumping the chocolate on top of the peanut butter mixture, they looked disgustingly like wombat turds, so I melted another block in the microwave (duh!!) and poured that on top. Hence, these peanut butter cups had a pretty thick layer of chocolate to bite through...all GOOD!
You can have fun making these while gossiping with a friend, because it's slightly tedious work; you need to press peanut butter filling into each cup with your fingers, and then pour chocolate over each one. It's perfect friendship cooking, or something you could enjoy making with kids.

But phwoaaaarrr they're rich. I know of somebody who tried one and dreamt about them all week. I think she succumbed and made a batch of her own. They're worth it.
I found my recipe here:

Autumnal birthday cake for the autumn of my life....

2007-04-12T17:51:00.000+10:00

On the 30th March it was my 30th birthday, and so far it's been an extended one starting with this birthday cake at a rehearsal 4 days beforehand, and a ending with an afternoon drinks party for friends at my house on Easter Monday. In between I've had dinners with family and a very luxurious weekend away in Daylesford, with a lunch at The Lake House and spa treatments daahling! in Hepburn Springs. Still to come is another birthday weekend away with more friends. I like special birthdays! They almost make up for the slight panic you may feel at turning an age where you thought you would be all grown-up, and realising you have a long way to go before that happens.
I didn't want to make another chocolate cake to take for rehearsing friends, so I turned to this one in Nigella's Domestic Goddess: the Autumnal birthday cake. Appropriate as my birthday falls in the first real flush of Melbourne autumn, which is my favourite time of year. The days are warm, clear and sunny, the leaves are turning, the afternoon light is golden and the nights are crisp and I can curl under my doona for the first time in months. Do you like my pseudo-artistic cake decorating efforts with the leaves from our front yard? Hey, I brushed the dirt off first!

The cake is an adaptation of a maple & pecan layer cake cake from the Magnolia Bakery in New York, and it uses 2 full bottles of maple syrup. You know how much that stuff costs? Hell! I might as well make it from GOLD! I nearly reached for the imitation maple-flavoured slop, but slapped myself around the head and reminded myself that I'll only turn 30 once, and if I couldn't buy the good stuff for my good friends then I was a horrible person. At least buy the good stuff for me! Despite the amount of syrup in the cake and the frosting, it wasn't overwhelmingly sweet, although the smell convinced many otherwise. This cake would be a great wasp attractor.

It's a simple, sponge-like cake batter, flavoured with maple, that is best eaten on the day it's made as it tends towards dryness. It was already heading that way that evening. The frosting is a cooked meringue, with the texture of marshmallow fluff, again flavoured with maple syrup, and quite sticky to touch. The pecans provided a textural contrast that was needed, although I was confused by the amount in the recipe, because the picture in Nigella's book definitely doesn't show it covered in as many as specified! The recipe doesn't instruct this, but I toasted the pecans before chopping them in salted butter, and based on my new knowledge from Ray Capaldi at Fenix about the need for salt in nut-based desserts, I added a hefty pinch of my pink Murray River salt flakes. I liked the taste of salt cutting through the sticky meringue.

A note for next time: it calls for a lot of flour - 1/2 kilo of it, and self-raising flour at that. I don't like the squeaky, chalky mouthfeel of SR flour, especially in those quantities, and again armed with my new knowledge from Ray Capaldi about how flour is a cheap filler, next time I would cut down the amount. Hopefully it would still set, but it's worth a try. It might stop the tendency towards dryness too.
It's rich and filling, and we could only manage small slices, although my brother who really doesn't have a sweet tooth came in late at night and found the large wedge leftover. Heating it up in the microwave (dryness factor) he ate the entire CHUNK, which frankly astounds me. I know he likes maple syrup, but....whoa!
No recipe on my site this time, but I found it on another blog. Enjoy!

Tagged with cake

Desserts of the Future

2007-03-28T15:48:00.000+10:00

On Monday night I turned up at Fenix demanding my just desserts. My friend had emailed me soon after the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival program came out asking if I'd be interested in going along to a dessert dinner at Fenix. It was expensive, so I hesitated, but then remembered I've been wanting to eat there for ages, ever since Raymond Capaldi really embraced the whole molecular gastronomy thing. I ate at Reserve when George Calombaris had just started there, and remember my mum's reaction to her blue cheese and dark chocolate crab-meat patty creation when it appeared in front of her (I seem to recall it all worked together??), and I caught a few episodes of Heston Blumenthal's latest series when I was in the UK last year. So, I figured we'd get to sample some pretty interesting flavours and combinations. Plus, who doesn't think the idea of a dinner which includes 1 main and 4 desserts matched with wines doesn't sound like a Very Good Thing?!

Raymond Capaldi came out and set us all straight immediately. He's got some presence, that man, plus an accent straight out of Billy Connolly:
"Right, so desserts are not meant to be sweet."
Huh? Confusion all 'round. Hell, we're not going to get desserts made of savoury stuff, are we??
Yes, and no. His belief (and I think it's a sound one) is that the overwhelming sensation of a dessert should not be only sugar and sweetness. There should be a mix of flavours and taste sensations, and a good dessert should make use of all 5 tastes our tongues can sense. He's big on unami as one of them, so seaweed takes a starring role in many. Salt is important in desserts too, especially when using nuts or chocolate.
He went on to explain that recipes found in popular foodie magazines are created for the lowest common denominator and are full of unnecessary extenders. Flour is one such nasty extender, and his own example was the Fenix basic chocolate souffle, which has all the flour removed, hence creating a much more intense flavour and delicate texture. Once a customer requested a sticky date pudding, which isn't on their menu, so he Googled a recipe and told the staff to remove 1/2 the flour and double the sauce. They argued it wouldn't set, and told him his reputation would be on the line when it flopped, but it turned out to be the best sticky date pudding they'd ever tasted; just set and wobbling on the plate. As somebody who tends to bake more often than your basic Joe, and who shouldn't be eating vast quantities of flour, this idea interests me.
Enough of the theories: onto the food.

So we wouldn't only be eating desserts, we started with a main course of 36 hour cooked lamb. Sorry about the crap photo; I hadn't worked out my manual settings yet!
This was exquisite. The lamb neck meat was cooked at 58 degrees C for 1.5 days, which meant that the meat never got so hot that the fat escaped into the pan. Instead, the meat cooked extremely slowly, with the fat remaining inside keeping it lubricated. After 36 hours, the lamb was still pink inside and so tender we didn't need to use knives. We had a velvety sauce made of pureed char-grilled eggplants, almonds, garlic etc. and a bit of roasted capsicum (not a turd, despite the photo). I'd be really keen to replicate this at home. It'd be one of the only things from the night I'd be capable of doing!

A special guest on the night was Will Goldfarb from Room 4 Dessert; a high-end dessert bar in New York. He gave us a talk (very lovely guy, but slightly pointless talk) before the meal began, and this first dessert, was one of his creations. I knew when I saw something as mundane as ice-cream sandwich on the menu, that it would actually be something pretty special. Hey, probably something with foams and liquid nitrogen?! Actually, it was pretty simple; a sweet-dough biscuit topped with vanilla icecream and a scoop of Epoisses cheese topped with smoked salt. Will said it plays on peoples' love for things sweet, fatty and salty and, sure, I could have eaten at least 5 of these, but maybe it was just 'cos I was hungry; because if I'm being completely honest what it tasted like was a bit of soft camembert and icecream on a shortbread biscuit! Great icecream and amazing cheese, but still.... We couldn't taste the smoked salt. Each part was lovely, but it was definitely a head-spin to eat icecream and salty, creamy cheese together. The simplest dessert on the night, but I remember the taste and texture intensely.

Tahitian Vanilla Mousse with cucumber sorbet was one that didn't grab my attention on the menu but ended up being our favourite of the night. A advantage of events like this is that they challenge your preconceived ideas about what you like. This is not the sort of thing I'd order on a dessert menu, but it was incredible. The vanilla mousse made with Tahitian vanilla seeds is the long, white sausage. The cucumber sorbet is topped with a mango gel, and a coconut tapioca mixture is down the other end. Along the way is a square of lime jelly, a few bean shoots and cubes of cucumber. What I enjoyed was that each component tasted good on its own, but even better when combined with others. We had fun mixing and matching. Fresh and light and citrussy, this was a winner. Particularly the cucumber sorbet: wow, star of the plate.

Now, what I said before about challenging preconceptions? This "Coffee & Potato" is the type of thing I would have ordered from a menu. The description struck the right notes of interest in me: coffee icecream, hazelnut custard and potato puree, but just didn't do it for us. All of us (we'd made friends by this stage).
Ray described this dish beforehand, pointing out that it wasn't dreamt up in the middle of the night by a crazy person. He said the Ratte potato has a hazelnut taste to it, and hazelnut pairs well with coffee, so he figured they'd work well together. Great idea, in theory. But in reality the puree was not and the texture was all wrong. Coffee icecream: great. Hazelnut custard: gorgeous. But the potato was too dry and powdery, and got caught in your throat. If it had been lubricated just a little more, it might have been more successful, but who knows if adding milk or butter to it would have thrown the taste balance out with the other components? I just couldn't get past the fact that I was eating a lump of dry mashed potato with my icecream and custard! A friend who heard about it said it sounded like something made up by a toddler playing in the kitchen. :-) Not awful, in the realm of all the food in the world, just not the best of what we experienced that night.

This green apple sorbet, with parsnip puree, blackberries and cashew nut jam is another thing I might have overlooked on a menu, but again, I've had my preconceptions challenged. Along with our new friends we decided this was a real winner. Ray had already explained to us that in old-English useage, 'nip' meant something sweet, and parsnips were generally used in cakes and desserts. Sometime in the last 200 years this changed and parsnips are just known for their use in the Sunday roast and veggie soup. I can't say I enjoyed the parsnip puree on its own, but I don't think that was the point. Combined with the tangy apple sorbet and the salty cashew nuts it was a incredible combination. We felt this dessert in particular was made for playing with taste combinations. Cubes of apple combined with salted blackberries and the amazing cashew nut 'jam' is something I remember enjoying.

By the last course we were feeling pretty lightheaded; a different wine had been served with each course, and after our first enthusiastic sparkling we realised that if we were going to drive home, we were going to have to be a bit more careful. At the end of the night you can see how sensible we were, dammit:

The wines were really incredible; I've never had a meal where each course was so perfectly matched with the wine. There was one particular choice all of us disliked intensely when we tasted it (smelled like iodine!) but when combined with the coffee & potato dessertit suddenly worked.
You'll notice that in a dinner of 4 desserts chocolate didn't make an appearance, but that omission was rectified with the petit fours. We had a red fruit 'popsicle': kind of frozen air on a stick; a blackcurrant jelly (like the best jube you've ever tasted) and a salt & vinegar chocolate stick. Uh-huh. Salt & vinegar chocolate! And it was so amazing we were stealing extras from other peoples' plates (how could they possibly leave them??!). Adding salt to chocolate is already widely known to heighten the flavour of chocolate, but the addition of a sweet (possibly balsamic) vinegar was a revelation. Outstanding!
I'm glad I made the decision to go along. It was a real eye-opener of an evening, and enjoyable on many levels. My friend and I were so impressed with Raymond Capaldi's views on food, the service, and the look of the regular menu that we're planning to return for a degustation dinner; and hang the cost!!

Tagged with dessert

Lemon Chicken...Italian style

2007-02-28T18:06:00.000+11:00

How many times have you looked at that bottle of limoncello in the freezer and thought "My god, that must have been there for at least two years. What are we going to do with it?!" I know we're not the only people to be lured in by the romance of this Italian lemon liqueur: remembering warm summer evenings on a loggia, with a warm breeze tickling the leaves of trees in the olive grove and flowing through your hair, and sweet lemon flavour slipping down your throat. Admittedly, I've only experienced that scenario in my winter-in-Melbourne dreams, and in my life limoncello tends to burn all the way down and makes me cough. Somehow the dream just isn't quite recreated that way you intend, is it?
So, we've had this bottle of liqueur in the freezer for a long time, and I can't remember where or when I found this recipe, but it's just the thing if you find yourself in a similar perplexed state when cleaning out the freezer. I know it was from a food blog, so do let me know if it is yours.
Chicken baked in limoncello...what an idea! It sounds a bit outrageous, and I wasn't sure how it would work out, but the best way to describe it is Lemon Chicken, Italian Style. It really does work well; the sweetness of the limoncello is balanced by fresh lemon juice and summery herbs. I didn't have quite enough limoncello, so made up the difference with vodka....hey, it's all alcohol, and I know people who'd be pretty excited at the idea of chicken baked in vodka.
The ingredients listed are not set in stone; I didn't have lemon thyme, so used fresh rosemary and sage instead. I also added a touch of Spanish paprika to the sauce, which gave a hint of smokiness. Also, my chicken breasts didn't have skin, and in fact 2 of them were actually thighs, as I discovered as I started eating them! I have to admit I preferred the texture of the thighs to the breasts, but I'm a thigh girl after all.... It's a perfect meal for a warm summer's evening, even if it doesn't take place on a Tuscan hillside.
Read on for the recipe:

Chicken baked in limoncello

4 x 180g chicken breasts with skin on
8 garlic cloves
Pared rind & juice of 2 large lemons
6 sprigs lemon thyme
1 cup (250ml) limoncello
50g unsalted butter
2 tbs olive oil

-Place chicken in a non-metallic dish with garlic, rind & juice, thyme & limoncello. Cover & chill for one hour.
-Preheat oven to 180c. Heat butter & oil in a large heavy based frypan over high heat.
-Remove chicken from marinade (reserve marinade) & brown for 2-3 minutes each side.
-Place skin side up in a baking tray & roast for 10 minuts or until cooked through.
-Return frypan to medium heat, ad reserved marinade (including garlic & herbs) & stir for 5 minutes to reduce.
-Remove chicken from oven & rest for 5 minutes. Place on a serving plate, pour over sauce.
-Serve with rice or mashed potatoes and green veg.

Tagged with chicken

Mmmm...syrup

2007-02-20T09:02:00.000+11:00

Shrove Tuesday today, and for breakfast another batch of those excellent wholemeal buttermilk pancakes I made last year. Mmm - crispy edges from being fried in real butter. :-)

This year my brother splashed out and bought a bottle of real maple syrup ($$$!), but after a scientific taste test with one of each on the plate, I still prefer golden syrup. It's thicker, and stays near the food instead of running far away from it, and it's got that slight bitterness I love.
Wholemeal pancakes...who'da thunk they'd be so good?!

Too Damn Hot chicken salad

2007-02-17T16:32:00.000+11:00

This weekend it's damn hot...too hot! 3 days at the upper end of the 30s is not great incentive for doing much. Flicking half-heartedly through Nigella's Forever Summer a few weeks ago, when it was also too damn hot, revealed this chicken salad that looked pretty good for the weather. Her show of the same name happened to be on that night, and she was making this dish, so with that double whammy I figured it was telling me something!

I've never had Coronation Chicken, the dish she rejigged to make this, but it seemed to contain cooked chicken, mayonnaise, mango chutney, curry powder and apricot puree, which to me sounds like a combination thrown together by a deranged person home from the gym who JUST NEEDS TO EAT RIGHT NOW and doesn't care what they find in the fridge. I don't want to say "eugh" because I know many people of my grandmother's age who seemed to enjoy this....effort, but.....hmmm. Nigella's version also contains cooked chicken, but is much more sensible!
I mixed up a cooked chicken breast with a cubed mango, spring onion, chopped fresh chillies and lime juice and tossed it about with a torn up cos lettuce, a big handful of fresh coriander and a few drops of sesame oil. It's very evidently Asian-inspired, and was perfect for a hot sticky night. The lime juice and chilli kick was perfect, and although I'm really NOT a fan of fruit with meat, the mango and chicken was great together. For a hot night after a damn hot day, it's about all we could cope with - and afterwards I realised it had virtually negligible fat content - bonus!

Bern & Luzern

2007-02-17T11:07:00.000+11:00

The Bern bear city symbol on a ginger cake
I've been completely pathetic putting up the photos of what-we-ate-in-Europe, and I'm annoyed with myself. I'm not going to abandon this project halfway (or 1/4 way in because there's about another 6 weeks to go!) so I'm resuming it. Even if I only post photos without text, at least I'm finishing something I started!
After Payerne in western-French-speaking Switzerland we stopped for lunch in Bern, only 30 minutes away. Even though it's so close, suddenly everything was in German! In Payerne German was seen as something very foreign, and English even more so, but a few miles down the road it was a different story. Switzerland is fascinating; I love the place.

We were let loose for an hour or so to look around and grab something to eat. I soon discovered in the local market that I was able to communicate in French; in this area where the linguistic borders are so close, most people are at least bi-lingual. And as Bern is the Swiss capital, all the official languages are spoken and understood, even if the signs are in German. I didn't have as much success communicating in Italian, though!
I really liked Bern - it feels more like a small bustling market town than a national capital, and I guess that's because of the unique nature of the Swiss government, with 7 premiers of the cantons sharing the leadership position, and the function of the annual president mainly limited to greeting people at airports.
Miniature vegetables were all over the marketplaces of Europe this time of year. We couldn't figure out the allure of the miniature vegetable. I suspected they were used as autumn table decorations, but does anybody have a more detailed explanation?

The people of Bern have a violent history of eating small babies!

We spent too long wandering around the market and decided to get things to eat on the bus. There were about 10 cheese stalls, so we choose one at random and bought some vacherin and some truffle infused brie. Hoooeyy! Truffle infused brie! My friend who shared this with me is still sending messages raving about it, from her new home in the UK!
You just can't buy brie this ripe in Australia. Look at it - it's oozing! In the centre was another layer of cheese mixed with chopped truffles. This stuff nearly sent us falling to the floor in ecstasy...not a safe thing when driving on windy Swiss roads!

I bought a few day-old crusty rolls and we actually managed to get through that entire hunk of cheese, plus the vacherin. We also bought some local green apples to cut through the richness, and that simple lunch on the bus was a definite food highlight of the whole trip.

We had 2 nights in Luzern, compared to the one hour in Bern, but there are hardly any foodie photos we took. The weather turned rainy and cool for the first time in the trip there, and we were feeling a bit tired, so it was a quiet few days. I was billeted on my own with a student, in a typical student-hovel apartment. I lugged by bags on 3 local buses, hoiked them up 6 flights of stairs in the rain, was shown to my mattress on the floor and was told there wasn't any food in the house for dinner; would I like packet soup or a bowl of cereal? At 4am the housemate came home, newly broken up with his girlfriend, rolling drunk and surrounded by girls and decided to play German heavy-metal and cook spaghetti!! He didn't know there was a visiting Australian in the next room who had to get up in 3 hours to sing at church. Many people might have cried at this stage - I started to laugh and knew I'd look back on this with a smile. The next night I came home to find a pot-smoking party going on around my bed! Fabulous. But actually I had a great time staying with the students, experiencing real Swiss life, and learning a lot about Swiss culture and politics. I didn't have to worry about keeping the bathroom fanatically clean, either! Plus I got to try a variety of flavoured yoghurts, which was all they had in the fridge. Yoghurt in Switzerland isn't considered solely a health food, like here, so you can get choc chip cookie dough yoghurt, chestnut puree yoghurt, butterscotch etc.etc. Yum!

After our evening concert we were taken out for dinner to a Swiss restaurant. Above is the winner of the biggest-sausage-on-tour competition. I shared the fondue with Belinda but looking at that sausage and crispy roesti, I wish I'd chosen that instead.

Here's our Fondue For Two. It was exciting for the first 5 minutes in that "I'm really in Switzerland and eating cheese fondue" kind of way, and then it lost its spark. The only thing we had to dip in it was soft brown bread. Romance aside, a meal of bread and a bloody great pot of melted cheese is actually a bit dull! When I've had fondue here, we've had a variety of vegetables to dip in alongside the bread, which livens up the event. If our bread was toasted it would have at least provided a textural contrast, but the soft bread and soft cheese were a bit too similar. After about 10 minutes Belinda said "This isn't exciting any more".
I would never say to anybody not to have fondue in Switzerland; it's something you definitely have to do, but once is probably enough (I've done it twice now, and am happy to expand into the repertoire of enormous sausages and potato pancakes now!)

Here's a very early morning photo of gorgeous Luzern; lake, Totentanz bridge, tower, mountains surrounding the whole place... Hence the constant daily rain!!

Choccie cookie bonanza

2007-02-16T14:23:00.000+11:00

I haven't yet mentioned that I received a shiny red Kitchen Aid for Christmas, just like the one Plum received and I've been getting stuck into playing around with it. Last week I decided to make a chocolate pavlova for no other reason than the fact that I hadn't yet tried out the whisk attachment. How sad is that? Then I needed to get it out of the house before I ate it all, because it was GOOD.
I was going down to a friend's beachhouse on the Great Ocean Road, so I thought that was a good enough excuse to use the Kitchen Aid again. Surely everyone wants biscuits! I tried out two recipes: one for a choc chip cookie, and another for a peanut butter truffle biscuit that I admit was purely inspired by gluttony, peanut butter truffle - hello?! And the picture in the book was the sort that always made me stop and stare in longing.

But first, the choc chip cookies: these are courtesy of wrestler/movie star The Rock in the WWF cookbook! I read about them on a few different blogs and as so many of you know, I have a quest to find the best choc chip cookie recipe. This one is pretty damn good: I like CCCs with oatmeal in them; it gives heft and chew. But you need pretty damn strong muscles to stir the mixture - hence why you love your Kitchen Aid at a time like this! You can find the recipe here near the bottom of the page, which I halved and still ended up with about 80 cookies. Evidently The Rock enjoys things a little larger than I do...! I used a combination of a chunk of Valrhona dark chocolate and the leftovers of a choc-almond Christmas tree - you know those things made of chopped almonds mixed with chocolate and made into lots of branches in a tree shape - which was tasty but meant they ended up far too nutty. Hours later we were still picking nuts out of our teeth, so next time I'm sticking with normal chocolate. NB - these kept for ages without going manky, too.

The peanut butter truffle cookies come from a random English baking book, the type that includes photos of each step, and the photo shows the things warm from the oven with the truffle filling oozing out and looking delish. As you can see above, there was no oozement going on, but that disappointment aside, these were incredible - but a little tedious to make. You make up a peanut butter & golden syrup dough which is pretty soft and pasty. Combine that with our summer heat and I had to put it in the fridge for a few hours because there was no way I could roll that stuff out. When I could, I flattened a ball into a circle and added a spoonful of the truffle mixture and tried to fold the dough around it, with very varying success. Usually the dough was not dough-like enough to do it without cracking or falling apart, so lots of my cookies had cracked tops where the truffle mixture bubbled out. The taste was fabulous, anyway and I'd definitely make these again when I'm feeling domestic and have a bit of time and patience on my hands.
Read on for the recipe:

Peanut Butter Truffle Cookies
Makes ~20

125 g/4 oz dark chocolate
150ml/1/4 pint double cream*
125g/4oz softened butter
125g/4oz caster sugar
125g/4oz crunchy or smooth peanut butter
4 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp milk
225g/8oz plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1: Preheat oven to 180C/350F 10 minutes before baking. Make the chocolate filling by breaking the chocolate into small pieces and placing in a heatproof bowl.
2: Put the cream into a saucepan and heat for boiling point. Immediately pour over the chocolate
3: Leave to stand for 1-2 minutes, then stir until smooth. Se aside to cool until firm enough to scoop. Do not refrigerate (I needed to. I'm in an Australian summer!)
4: Lightly oil a baking sheet. Cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in the peanut butter, followed the golden syrup and milk.
5: Sift together the flour and bicarb. Add to the peanut butter mixture, mix well and knead until smooth.
6: Flatten 1-2 tablespoons of the cookie mixture on a chopping board
6: Put a spoonful of the chocolate mixture into the centre of the cookie dough, then fold the dough around the chocolate to enclose completely.
8: Put the balls on to the baking sheet and flatten slightly (be careful not to split them open!). Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until golden**
9: Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely and serve.

*I actually used yoghurt as it's what I had in the fridge. The filling had a slight tang which I liked against the sweet dough.
** I found this time wasn't long enough, as my biscuits became *extremely* soft the next day, and I needed to re-bake them for another 10 minutes so they didn't crumble when I picked them up.

Going bananas!

2007-02-11T13:06:00.000+11:00

It's been a recurring theme on many Aussie foodblogs over the past year: we miss our bananas. I think most of you have heard by now that in mid-March 2006, Cyclone Larry announced itself in far north Queensland and destroyed 95% of Australia's banana crop. At the time I remember a few people giggling, heh, bananas! Cyclone comes through and we lose bananas! But when the reality of our banana-less existence sunk in, and the prices of the few left in Australia shot up to about $16 a kilo, the situation was miserable. Australia wouldn't import bananas in the interim, so we could help our own farmers; mentioning this to some friends in the UK recently sparked a fairly heated argument about protectionism and our moral duty to help poorer countries who need to export the few goods they have. Like most things, I can see both points of view, and we decided to abandon the argument and go and have a pint instead.
Lady Lunchalot is today celebrating Banana Sunday, in which we celebrate the return of bananas to reasonable prices; currently about $3 a kilo, although I've been told that something disastrous has happened again up there, and prices will rise again. She gives a good potted history of the banana situation the past year, and made me realise how much I did miss those things: especially those mornings when I'm running late, and it's the perfect thing to grab and eat in the car...i.e. pretty much every morning.

There's a bit of a coincidence with the banana cake I made. I tore the recipe out of a New Idea magazine in the lunchroom at work, on Friday 17 March, planning to make it after I bought a few bananas to go soft. Cyclone Larry hit on the Monday morning, and my banana cake plans were put on the shelf. For a long time!
So, here is is finally. It's a bog-standard very easy banana cake recipe, sent in by a reader, but the thing that caught my eye was the inclusion of coconut cream. I can't say I can taste it in the finished cake, but it does make the cake very moist. I think it would keep a long time. The recipe recommends drizzling with passionfruit pulp before serving, but I forgot to buy any. My eye fell on my bottle of pomegrenate molasses, and I decided that would have a similar sort of tang. Well, what a revelation! From now on, I'm always adding it to my bananas; the sweet-sour tang perfectly offsets the almost sickly sweetness of the bananas. Plus, aren't pomegrenates the fruit of love? Seems appropriate, considering the event coming up this week. So, one cake is decorated in Valentines day hearts, and the other is heart shaped, and drizzled in the fruit of love. All's well with the world. :-)
Read on for the recipe:

Easy Banana Cake
From New Idea, March 2006

1 cup caster sugar*
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour**
1 cup mashed overripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1/2 cup coconut cream
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125g butter (1/2 pack) melted
Passionfruit pulp to serve (or pomegrenate molasses)
Cream cheese frosting:
25g butter, room temperature
75g cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups icing sugar mixture
1 tsp grated lemon rind

1: Grease a deep, 20cm round cake pan and line with baking paper. Preheat oven to 190C (moderately hot)
2: Combine sugar, flour, bananas, vanilla, coconut, coconut cream and eggs in a large bowl. Stir in melted butter until well combined. Pour mixture into prepared pan.
3: Cook for about 1 hour, or until cooked when tested. Stand cake in pan for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool
4: To make cream cheese frosting, beat all of the ingredients together in a small bowl with an electric mixer until well combined
5: Spread frosting over top of cold cake. Just before serving drizzle with passionfruit pulp.

* I used 1/2 cup caster sugar & 1/2 cup raw sugar
** I used 1 cup SR flour & 1/2 cup wholemeal SR flour. I think you could use all wholemeal SR without any problems.
Tagged with baking

Best doughnut in Melbourne?

2007-01-19T16:23:00.000+11:00

Is this the best doughnut in Melbourne? It could well be; it's definitely the best one I've tasted in a long while. Except for the amazing Polish plum jam donuts from Europa bakery in Acland Street.
It's a bomboloni, or bombolini, or bomboleo or something bomby from Dench's at 109 Scotchmer Street, North Fitzroy, almost opposite the excellent Piedimonte's supermarket on St George's Rd, where I can find all kinds of weird and exciting imported European foods, as well as any type of exotic dairy I want (sheep's yoghurt, quark..). That pocket of North Fitzroy is a foodie haven; if you haven't had brunch at The Greengrocer, and finished it off by picking up a block of Green & Black's chocolate, then I say, go treat yourself!
The donut is a typical deep fried, yeasted donut filled with custard, but superior in every way. It seems I'm not the only blogging fan, either (and his photo is much better 'cos you can see all the custard). The custard is light and eggy, with a hint of lemon - real Italian custard. And the donut is not heavy or leaden, even though it does pack a punch calorie-wise; your paper bag turns transparent from the oil pretty quickly. Eat up! They're tossed in sugar, so each bite is a mouthful of crunchy sugar, light donut and creamy, lemony custard. Ok, so not an everyday treat, but as occasional indulgences go, one of my favourites.
Dench is known for its sourdough breads, which are mainly supplied to restaurants around Melbourne, but they do have a shopfront selling products, and a few tables for breakfasts & lunches packed in pretty tightly. But for me it's all about the bombolonis.

Lamb Fest

2007-01-09T13:12:00.000+11:00

Going through the freezers before Christmas, trying to clear some space, we found a previously unknown hidden cache of lamb. Specifically legs of lamb in varying sizes, and no memory of having bought them. So, in trying to use them up in a more interesting way than just making standard roast lamb, I recalled a photo I'd seen in one of my cookbooks of a piece of lamb coated in yoghurt roasting on an oven tray. It took me a while to find the photo, in my sole Jamie Oliver book - Jamie's Dinners, and it looked pretty good, but I didn't have all the ingredients (fresh mint, tinned chickpeas - my supermarket is always out!), so I combined it with another yoghurty, minty marinade I found in Nigella's How To Eat. It was a bit of an experiment, but one that paid off.

I pulled out my mortar and pestle for about the first time in a year and ground up a 2 teaspoons of coriander seeds with 2 tablespoons black peppercorns. Then added 2 tablespoons dried mint, 2 garlic cloves, salt and some oil to make a paste. Then measured 250g yoghurt and juice of 1/2 lemon and mixed it all up.
Jamie's recipe was for a lamb leg, but one that had been boned and butterflied. My leg was a half size, and looked pretty manageable, so I decided to have a go boning it myself. It was....ok. Didn't help that I had to defrost it first and the inside was still hard: frozen meat, sharp knife and greasy hands don't make for a good combination! Eventually I got the bone out, randomly cut it down the middle and kinda managed to butterfly it into something almost even. Not the most sophisticated butchery skills, but full points for perservering!
The marinade goes into a freezer bag with the meat, and I left it for the afternoon at room temperature. We don't have many veggies in the house at the moment, so I found some old pumpkin, a few potatoes and red onions and sprinkled them with ground cumin, sumac (which I love) and olive oil.
Butterflied meat cooks much quicker than meat on the bone, so it only took 45 minutes at 200C to cook the lamb. It was more well-done than I'd choose, but it suited this recipe. The smells coming out of the oven were amazing; my brother, who was going out for dinner, was practically delirious and hung about the oven sniffing and watching the meat cook. It was a nicely novel way to cook it as you placed it directly on the oven tray, so it browned all over, and dripped its yoghurty, meaty juices into the vegetables below. Consequently the veggies were astoundingly good! It kind of reminded us of Indian tandoori cooking, but without Indian spices.
Because there were some pretty strong flavours happening in the marinade and spicing up the veggies, I made a pot of plain boiled peas to go along with it; their simple sweetness was a good foil to all that partying in our mouth.
And the leftover lamb makes a wicked sandwich!

Tagged with lamb

Fresh mint

2007-01-08T13:43:00.000+11:00

I had a lot of fresh mint hanging about in the week after Christmas. I made my usual fetta & watermelon salad, which uses it, but as the days around Christmas were so cold, it wasn't really the weather for the sort of things that usually call for it.
When the weather heated up the week after, it had gone a bit limp and blah, but I reconsidered throwing it out. Instead I made two fresh mint recipes from Nigella's Forever Summer. The lime & mint Coolaid, and the mint & pea soup.
I didn't have any limes, but lots of bald lemons from my onion, lemon & thyme relish-making fits, so used that instead. I think lime would have given a more desirable sourness, as this drink was waaaaaay sweet. A warning to any non-sweet-tooths out there: you will need to dilute this with water. It almost tasted like cordial syrup to me! Very tasty & refreshing though.

The pea & mint soup is complete simplicity to make. Steep some fresh mint stems & dried mint in vegetable stock (which I made up with hot water and Vegeta powder) and add to a spring onion and frozen peas.you've softened in oil. Then boil it up until the peas are soft, whiz it up with a blender and add some creme fraiche (I used no-fat yoghurt). The taste was incredibly good; it tasted like something that had many more ingredients and should have taken so much longer to prepare. Recommended!

Tagged with fresh mint

Handmade foodie presents

2007-01-04T15:37:00.000+11:00

Being time-rich and money-poor this Christmas, I decided to make foodie gifts for friends and fam, hoping that old maxim about homemade gifts meaning so much more blah blah etc. held true. The decision was helped out by reading the latest issue of Donna Hay while lazing about by the pool; there was a feature on caramelised onion relishes, which was pretty appealing. But the clincher for me me was the time saving tip about sterilising: it says there's no need to worry about sterilising jars before adding preserves, because the hot preserves will do all the work. Once you've cleaned the jars with hot, soapy water and rinsed and dried them, you just fill them, screw the lid on tight and turn the jars upside down and allow them to cool. The hot relish sterlises the insides of the jars and lids. BONUS!!! Whenever I've made jams and assorted conserves (yes, Little Britain reference) I've spent ages zapping hot water in the microwave until boiling point, making a hell of a mess and nearly killing myself with the safety combo of glass, steam and boiling water.
So, thus convinced, and really hoping I wasn't going to give my loved ones botulism, I was most tempted by the red onion, thyme and lemon relish. If you haven't made jams or relishes before, this is a good start. It's not hard at all to chuck stuff into a big pot and let it cook. You don't have to worry about setting times and pectin levels and all that faffing about that goes with jam making.

I'm actually not a relish or chutney girl at all; I like my savoury food savoury. Chutneys etc. are usually far too sweet for me, but I'm actually kind of won over by this one. Yes, it has that characteristic sweet & sour taste of relishs, from the vinegar and brown sugar, but it also has something I quite like. I intended it to be an accompaniment to the Christmas ham, and it does that job well, but it really shines when paired with a really bitey cheddar cheese. The type that burns the roof of your mouth...mmmm. Before Christmas my favourite lunch was toasted bread with butter (real butter, not that nasty fake stuff!), bitey cheese, onion relish and a carpet of flat leaf parsley. Weird combination, created out of stuff we had in the fridge, but it worked so damn well. (Now I'm just trying to eat up the leftover leg of ham- now 2 weeks old...) I've only had one report from my present recipients, and she said she loves it, which I'm happy to know!
I won't lie and say I eat it every day, but just maybe this girl is starting to turn toward the world of chutney...?

Read on for the recipe:

Red Onion, Lemon and Thyme Relish
Dec/Jan 07 Donna Hay magazine

1/2 cup (21/2 oz.) olive oil
2kg (4 1/2 lb) red onions, peeled and cut into wedges
3/4 cup thyme leaves (stripped from the branch)
1/2 cup lemon zest
1 cup (200g/7oz) brown sugar
1 cup (8 fl oz) white wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste*

Heat a large deep saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the oil and onions. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally for 40 minutes or until the onion is holden and caramelised. Add the thyme, lemon zest, sugar, vinegar, salt and peppr and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Cook for a further 10-20 minutes or until thick and syrupy. Makes 5 cups (2 pints)

*I found I needed quite a lot of salt to create a good balance between sweet and savoury: almost a 1/4 cup.
Tagged with relish

More chocolate

2007-01-03T15:31:00.000+11:00

Sorry, I've been very lazy and had an almost computer-free post-Christmas week, laying on the couch eating leftovers and watching Little Britain DVDs. I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas and 2007 shapes up to be a good year. Christmas day here had very bizarre weather; in the afternoon it was only 9 degrees, hailing and snowing in the nearby hills. Today it's 34 degrees. Climate change in action! I loved the cold Christmas day; for the first time it felt right having a roast dinner and plum pudding. I even made red cabbage and apple, and mulled wine for the occasion. If I can't be in Europe for it, I can dream...

Today I received a large box in the mail from the woman who was the only other person on my Intrepid tour around the Czech Republic in October. We had an amazing week, with a fabulous tour guide and I have some very happy memories of my time there. As the only 2 in the group, and having to share a room, it was fortunate that we immediately clicked!
She had already told me that she'd send some chocolates from Kansas City to me, but I didn't think too much about it and, to be honest, I wasn't expecting anything extraordinary. The box was enormous and filled with packing foam. An insulated bag in the centre contained four icepacks, that were, incredibly, still cool to touch, and inside was luxuriously packaged box of chocolate by Chistopher Elbow that took my breath away.

I had great fun getting to the chocolates and was gobsmacked when I found them; the packaging is so luxurious! And then finding the chocolates themselves - I truly never imagined I'd actually eat such gorgeous creations myself! I've seen such intricately decorated chocolates in magazines and websites, but I'm pretty sure there is nobody in Melbourne doing such amazingly presented confectionary. Or is there? I'd love to know.

And the flavours! A representative example: Strawberry balsamic, Russian tea, Rosemary Caramel, pear cinnamon, Tahitian vanilla bean, Pinot Noir caramel, Spanish saffron, Caramel with fleur de Sel, Vietnamese Cinnamon, Espresso with lemon...
Two layers - so 2 of each. There's a note saying that because they contain no preservatives, they must be eaten within 12-14 days from purchase.

But I think I'm too in awe of them to try them! I admit I have only looked at them so far. I don't want to disturb the perfection. But I'm looking forward to getting into them very soon; they smell amazing. I'm so touched that she went to such effort and expense to send these to me; I was quite overwhelmed when I opened them. There are some really lovely people around.

Now what on earth could I send in exchange??? Maybe not a Violet Crumble and Caramello Koala....

Leftovers

2006-12-27T16:04:00.000+11:00

Is there any better reason for Christmas leftovers?

Cailler Chocolate Factory

2006-12-22T12:22:00.000+11:00

In my Payerne post I dropped a comment that we were to visit a Swiss chocolate factory, but wrote nothing more. I thought that such a note-worthy, life-changing experience deserved its own post, of course...
I'd been looking forward to this for months, ever since I discovered the location of Payerne, and did lots of internet research. I wrote emails to our contact about how best we could fit in a visit on the way, and polled group members about who was interested in visiting, I even had an argument with the tour committee about whether we should go or not (amazingly there are people in this world who don't like chocolate, and don't think anyone should either. Geez, even if you don't want to eat the chocolate, it's part of the local history and culture!), which resulted in splinter faction group of aspiring chocolate factory visitors devising plans to sweet talk our bus driver into making an unscheduled detour!
In the end our hosts included a visit in our list of official activities. Those who didn't want to go could check out the Roman ruins. Ruins - bah! We saw ruins in Rome! ;-)

The Cailler chocolate factory is about 45 minutes from Payerne, in the town of Broc - very close to the town of Gruyeres, where the cheese is from. It's part of the Nestle stable of companies, based in nearby Vevey, and after we'd arrived, a few people saw the Nestle sign and complained "you mean, we travelled all this way just to eat Nestle chocolate??!" Nestle brand chocolates in Australia are really nothing special. Cailler has nothing to do with that. It has always been a smaller-scale manufacturer that was bought out by Nestle sometime in the past. Apparently only 40% of its production is exported, so it's not very well known outside Switzerland, adding to its allure for me. Unique presents for people back home!

We were running to a tight schedule without time to spare that afternoon, and I had read many accounts of the delights of the tasting room. I'd heard rumours of all-you-can-eat Swiss chocolate. I looked at my watch and tapped my foot at the laggers straggling off the bus. We were given a guide and taken on a tour, which I'm sure would have been more interesting if I hadn't been looking at my watch and tapping my feet. Tasting room, people! Get a move on. Stop asking stupid questions! Yes, yes, precision equipment, yes, yes, proud and noble history of chocolate making, yep, discovery of crushed hazelnuts, no, you don't want to watch the video of historical production techniques, c'mon people, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!!!
I was told later that each time my friends looked for me I was standing the near the exit door looked pained.
Here's a token photo I took before the tasting room. Yes, it's a giant lump of cocoa butter. It's FAT, people. Solid FAT. We could taste bits if we wanted (yes, I want!) and it was not nice. Like scraping your fingernail through lard. We were told that white chocolate is made entirely of this cocoa butter, therefore when you are eating white chocolate, you are essentially eating solid fat. This was imparted to us in a very dispassionate way, but the looks of horror on peoples' faces was priceless.

Here's a lump of solid fat cocoa butter floating in a bucket of cocoa beans. Not for any real purpose. We could also taste the cocoa beans, and they really didn't taste very nice! Turning those beans into the chocolate we eat was a huge process of discovery. Pity I didn't sit and reflect on this magnificence because I was standing by the exit door tapping my foot....

And here we are. It was like walking into dreamland. Into every childs' Willy Wonka dream. Row and rows of chocolate there for you to grab and stuff into your mouth. I was off and at it before the guide even got into the room to give us the low-down, standing in front of me. I tried to looked innocent and smile wihout opening my lips and revealing chocolate stained teeth, nodding my head in sympathy when she described bus loads of people who stuff chocolate into their pockets and run away. Oh! I'd never thought of doing that! (damn). Yes, we could eat as much as we wanted, and we could stay as long as we wanted; they would even set up a camp bed in the room if we wanted (ooh, really? Where do you keep it?), but we were not allowed to take any away with us. They also told us there was absolutely no expectation on us that we would buy anything, which of course made me decide I would.
We only had about 10 minutes, so we were OFF!

On these tables is an example of every type of chocolate Cailler makes, except for the blocks. Each tray carried examples of a certain product or line. Go for it, people!

This selection is known as Femina. They were soft pralines - more nougat than chocolate. I liked these, but I'm not so Femina. I like a bit more dark chocolate and more chunks. I was interested to learn that the Swiss prefer milk chocolate over the bitterness of dark, which is why Swiss milk chocolate is so good. Also, you can only be guaranteed of the chocolate using real milk and cream (no powdered stuff) when you buy Swiss or Belgian chocolate.

These were the Ambassador range. I bought a box of these to bring home, which I posted from London 10 weeks ago, and still haven't received. I hate to think of the condition they'll be in when I get them. This selection had the most amazing flavour I tried - a dark chocolate filled with burnt caramel. Really burnt. It was incredible - I kept going back for more. I recommended it to a friend who immediately spat it into the bin. Evidently strong flavours like that aren't to everybody's taste!

Plain chocolate square which got rather overlooked in the shadow of everything else.
In 10-15 minutes we all ate FAR TOO MUCH chocolate. I can't say I was surprised. We all walked out of the room feeling a bit green and queasy, but what an amazing experience it was! Let loose in the shop, we all stocked up - and found some really interesting blocks with flavourings of green tea, black pepper, orange and cocoa nibs etc. I'd report on those but they're sitting on a ship somewhere in the Indian ocean!!

The view walking out of the factory back to the bus. Picture perfect, n'est-ce-pas?

Dutch Almond Christmas Ring

2006-12-21T23:09:00.000+11:00

This is another thing I tasted at one of the baking demonstration classes I sometimes attend. In this case, the description didn't appeal, but the samples handed around certainly did! Also, I'm a fan of traditional European Christmas foods, so that was another pulling point for me.
It's a sweet shortcrust pastry case with a soft filling made of ground almonds, lemon and glace cherries, topped with toasted flaked almonds and lemon icing. I took this one to a function, so don't have any cross-section images, but because I used natural almond meal (ie ground with skins on) it looked kind of like a sausage roll! I have always hated glace cherries, but the ones I bought from the shop are something else altogether. They're more jellied than chewy, and adding them to the filling worked really well. I think I've come around. Although, if you really can't stand them, you can use dried apricots or even those soft raspberry lollies ('though our teacher was not entirely approving!)
I really liked this, and am considering making another for Christmas day. It's not too hard, but there are a couple of steps involved, including making the filling 24 hours in advance. The fact it's non traditional-British will appeal to certain members of my family, who are not big fans of Christmas cake or anything with dried fruit or mixed peel. This is something a bit different, and apparently you can make it into smaller, individual portions if you're looking to give somebody a home-made foodie gift.
If you're looking for something a bit different, I highly recommend it.
Read on for the recipe:
Dutch Almond Christmas Ring (Kerskrans)
Makes 1 large ring or 8 rolls.

Filling:
200g ground almonds (almond meal)
pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 cup caster sugar
zest 2 lemons
Mix all ingredients together, cover bowl in plastic wrap and place in fridge for 24 hours.
Pastry:
185g plain flour
2 tablespoons caster sugar
25-30mls cold water
pinch salt
125g butter, chilled and grated (like grating cheese)
Mix flour, salt and sugar in food processor. Add butter, process until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add water very slowly as you process until pastry form a ball. Tip pastry onto lightly floured work surface, flatten dough into rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap and place in fridge for 30 minutes.
Extra ingredients:
60g glace cherries, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon lemon juice
flaked almonds
Icing sugar

To make ring:
1: Roll filling into a long sausage shape (approx. 60 cm). Set aside.
2: Roll pastry out into a long rectangle measuring approx 60cm x 10cm, trim edges straight.
3: Place the filling along centre of pastry, press chopped cherries into filling sausage.
4: Lightly brush dough with water, wrap over filling. Place pastry (seam side down) onto flat, greased tray. Form into ring joining ends, brush pastry with egg, sprinkle with almonds. Cover with plastic wrap, place in fridge for 15 minutes.
5: Preheat oven Fan forced 180C/ Gas/Elec 200C. Cook for 20-25 minutes until golden.
6: When cool, add lemon juice to icing sugar and drizzle over ring. Decorate with more flaked almonds or chopped cherries, if desired.
Tagged with Christmas

Payerne

2006-12-21T22:44:00.000+11:00

Payerne was the beginning of our Festival Of Cheese. And chocolate. Belinda said she was going to write a book about how to lose weight with cheese and chocolate. Using the choir as a test case. If our cholesterol wasn't higher by the end of our Swiss week, then I'll eat another fondue.
Payerne is in western French-speaking Switzerland. We drove past Montreux and near Lausanne to get there. It's a tiny little place of non-importance, set in the picturesque Broye valley. This is not the Switzerland of mountains. This is the Switzerland of rolling pastures and dairy cattle supplying the milk to the many chocolate and cheese factories around the place. Check out that scenery - can't you just imagine the milk the cows eating that grass would make?!

11th century Payerne abbey
We were hosted by members of a local choir, who were the sweetest people. They ranged from school teachers to farmers, and those of us who weren't billeted with families in town, stayed on working dairy farms, supplying the milk to the chocolate factories! In that part of Switzerland English is not so widely spoken, so most of us got to try out our high-school French vocab. Being hosted gives you such a wonderful opportunity to really absorb the local culture and make new friends, and our time in Payerne was a definitely a highlight of the tour.
There's not a lot in Payerne, but it does have an amazing 11th century abbey, and Roman ruins. Our hosts organised our time, and we started the day touring the abbey and hearing to an organ recital. I kept touching the stones trying to absorb the fact that they'd been there 900 years.

To relax after the recital they took us to the town council wine cellars (do we have those in Australia?!!) for a pre-lunch wine-tasting. Nothing like wine at 11am! My memory is a bit hazy (!) but I believe the wine was local, Broye-valley Swiss wine. Property of the town council. A nice way to start lunch!

Lunch next, in the nearby town of Grand Cours. In the hall of the local primary school, actually. Built 1903, so an atmospheric hall! We walked through another set of winding medieval Swiss streets to get there. Yawn. Yeah, just another set of beautiful medieval Swiss streets....

We had been told we'd be having "some cheese" for lunch. "Some" was an understatement. Having already had cheese for dinner and breakfast, we were in for a lunch of melted cheese. On potatoes. Otherwise known as Raclette. It was very cool! There were long tables set up with many raclette machines, for us to make our own melted cheese. Basically they worked like mini grills. You placed your pre-sliced piece of raclette cheese into the little shovel thing, and placed it under the grill until it melted and then you poured it over your potatoes. Like so....:

Mmmmmm......melty cheese!
Raclette cheese is naturally waxy, and not so nice to eat when cold. It's made to be melted, and it does so really quickly. And we had token greenery too. To offset the fattiness, we had bowls of little pickled gherkins and onions to eat with it, which was actually really appreciated. Just melted cheese on potatoes could get a bit much....

They also gave us local bacon, and in great act-now, ask-later Aussie style we chucked them on top of the machine to grill, like we were making breakfast. We made pretty serious messes on the grill top, before we were told the the bacon usually just gets added to the cheese in the shovels underneath. Oops...
(Belinda took that bacon shot - I really like it)

So, here's a plate of the finished Raclette product. Melted cheese poured over steamed potatoes, alongside a pile of bacon and a few pickles. Knowing we were going to visit a chocolate factory after lunch didn't make us eat any more lightly, to be honest. A light, healthy lunch - not really. Fun - definitely!

After our concert that night the choir members put on a supper for us, in the same school hall, bringing along local specialities they made themselves. Apparently the local food of the Broye valley is The Tart. It was a Tart-a-Palooza! Tarts with onion, tarts with cheese, tarts with bacon, tarts with plums, berry tarts, tarts, TARTS, TARTS!
Beautiful tarts of course, and a lovely atmosphere. Especially when our hosts suddenly broke into local folksongs for us. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house...

Tagged with Payerne

Low fat egg nog cake

2006-12-15T22:59:00.000+11:00

Yeah, back on the low-fat delights again. And it's definitely Christmas. I can tell because there's about 3,000 people outside out house, checking out the lights on the street where I live, preventing me from getting home after rehearsal. Aiee! Yes, it's Christmas again.

I thought this cake was another success from Alice Medrich's Chocolate and the art of low-fat desserts, from which I've made a few things. And if you're looking to make something for a Christmas function, but hoping not to totally blow out the calories, this is a suggestion.
It's just a variation of her basic pound cake recipe, adding fresh grated nutmeg, a liquor soak of brandy and rum and an alcoholic glaze.
If you haven't made an Alice Medrich low-fat recipe before, here's a tip: she's totally pedantic and tedious. You'll end up with 4 bowls around the benches and going crazy wondering whether the last blend was on fast or medium speed, muttering to yourself about insufferably bossy recipes. She's a perfectionist, and with low-fat recipes like hers, I guess you need to be. Just be prepared. This is no just-add-water cake mix!
She notes that this cake is slightly moister the next day. I can't vouch for that as we ate it a few hours after baking, but I think she'd be right. It was still a bit dense and a tad dry; the liquor soak was appreciated. But if you're organised, do make it before hand (and then do leave me a comment letting me know if she was right).
PS - Don't use pre-grated nutmeg. That's missing the point! Whole nutmegs are on the same shelves as the other ground spices at the supermarket. Get some of those.
Read on for the recipe:

Low Fat Egg Nog Pound Cake
from Alice Medrich's "Chocolate and the art of low-fat desserts" (out of print)
1 1/2 cups sifted plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 bicarb of soda
3/8 teaspoon salt (I use a pinch)
1 egg
2 egg whites
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
5 tablespoons unsalted butter (70 grams)
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Liquor soak:
3 tablespoons brandy
3 tablespoons dark rum
2 tablespoons sugar
Glaze:
1/4 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon brandy
1 tablespoon rum

Serves 10-12. Best if baked 1 day before serving
1: Preheat oven to 325F (170C). Spray 5-cup loaf pan, or 5-6 cup Bundt pan.
2: Whisk to combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Sift together. Set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together the whole egg with the egg whites. Set aside. Combine the vanilla and buttermilk. Set aside.
3: Cut the butter into chunks and place in an electric mixer bowl. Beat to soften, about 1 minutes. Add sugar and nutmeg gradually, beating constantly for about 3 minutes. Gradually dribble beaten eggs into sugar/nutmeg mixture, beating a medium-high speed for 2-3 minutes. On low speed, beat in a third of the flour mixture, scraping the bowl as necessary. On medium-high speed, gradually dribble in half of the buttermilk mixture, scraping the bowl as necessary. On low speed, beatin half the remaining flour. On medium-high speed, beat in the rest of the buttermilk, always scraping the bowl as necessary. On low speed, beat in the remaining flour mixture until well combined. Batter may look slightly curdled; this is OK.
4: Scrape batter into pan and bake until the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan, the top is golden, and a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. In a tube pan the cake will bake in 35-40 minutes; in a loaf pan, 65-70 minutes.
5: While cake is baking, prepare liquor soak: Simmer brandy and rum with sugar for 2 minutes. Set aside to cool. Also prepare a glaze: combine icing sugar with the brandy and rum.
6: Cool cake for 10-15 minutes on a rack over a plate to catch drips. If using a tube pan, run a knife around the tube if necessary to release cake. Invert the pan and unmold to cool completely.
7: Plunge a skewer into the cake all over. Spoon the soaking liquid slowly over the cake. Remove the plate from beneath the rack and collect the excess liquid. Replace plate under rack and spoon the liquid over the cake again. Repeat as often as necessary until all syrup has soaked into the cake. Brush the glaze over the top and sides and centre core of cake. Cool cake completely before storing or serving. Cake is slightly moister the next day.

Calories per serving: 171
Fat: 5.44g
% calories from fat: 28%
Protein: 2.96g
Carbohydrates: 28g
Cholesterol: 30.9 mg.
Tagged with Christmas baking

Unusual Lindt flavours for Christmas

2006-12-12T18:28:00.000+11:00

This is a good one: Cinnamon and coriander. Interesting. Unusual! Seasonally flavoured things seem to be all the go in Europe. Even though I was in Dresden in mid-October, the Christmas spirit was getting into full swing. One day I noticed workers putting up the street decorations for the Christmas markets. Pretty funny, as it was a sunny 24 degrees that day, and I felt like I was back in Australia!
To get to my hotel I had to walk through the main train station - so clean I thought armies of mop-wielding robots were hiding in cupboards - and past a great snack shop, which had a WALL of Ritter Sport chocolate and a WALL of Lindt - in weird and wonderful flavours. We get nothing weird in Australia. Intense Orange is about as unusual as we get. Yawn and bah!
I'm all about the Lindt flavours, and the woman got to know me pretty quickly as the weirdo girl who couldn't speak German and kept buying truckloads of chocolate blocks. They had everything from Intense Pear, to Espresso, to Passionfruit Yoghurt to Strawberry Pannacotta. The Christmas flavours got me though: I tried Lindt cinnamon and coriander chocolate toffee-coated macadamia nuts and caramel apple Lindt balls. Hello - CARAMEL APPLE LINDT BALLS!!!!! Can you GET any better than that?? Why don't we get caramel apple Lindt balls in Australia??! C'mon Lindt management - give us the good stuff. Surely the Australian palate isn't so parochial and nervous. Have some trust in our sense of adventure! At least try some seasonal flavours on us eager chocolate eaters.
Yeah, so none of those caramel apple balls made it back past Prague and I ate the entire bag in one sitting. Yeah, so what?!? But this bar has made it, and is my last block of chocolate from the many I bought back - including the 5 Green & Black's blocks I bought at mega-cheap prices in Wales. Is that stuff amazing, or what!!

Cherry Clafouti

2006-12-12T12:04:00.000+11:00

It's cherry season here now, and incredibly, despite the crazy weather we've had in the past month, from frost and snow to 42 degree scorchers, the cherry harvest has managed to be a bumper one. My grandmother went on an excursion with her old Italian pensioner group to a cherry farm and came home with kilos of the things (I can't wait until I'm retired and can go on pensioner excursions!).
There are a few things you can do with a huge bowl of cherries, besides just eating them, but I was looking for something quick, and cherry clafouti is one of the quickest things. It's basically a sweet batter pudding studded with fruit. The point of using cherries is that the juices explode in your mouth as you bite into them, so you musn't stone the fruit. But you might want to inform your guests of that! I heard a sickening crunch from somebody who missed that announcement...
Not stoning the cherries means the whole thing takes about 5 minutes to make. I used a recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Cookbook, but despite the fact I love Hugh and his shows, and find him a bit sexy, I didn't much like his clafouti recipe. The batter came out really stodgy and heavy, rather than the light, pancakey texture I'd wanted. His recipe uses 3 eggs, and mine were very big, so maybe I should have cut down on one? Maybe I shouldn't have blended it so thoroughly (although he even recommends the use of a food processor). Perhaps it just needs a little leavning, such as baking powder??
He's right though, in that it's best served lukewarm or cold, not straight out of the oven. Good if you need to make something to be served later.

NB - Belinda took these photos, as my camera is away being fixed after it exploded in the chocolate factory in Switzerland! Apparently it will take a month to get back, so I've since borrowed one from a friend. Thanks Belinda!
Read on for the recipe:

Cherry Clafouti
Slightly varied from "The River Cottage Cookbook", Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Butter or cooking spray for greasing
450g black or red cherries, washed but unstoned
75g caster sugar
125g plain flour
a pinch of salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
300ml milk
a splash of vanilla essence
flaked almonds
icing sugar for dusting *
*A 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder might work wonders on the batter.
*A few drops of almond essence could work well also

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly grease a 25cm-diameter round or tin baking dish, or a rectangular one of similar size. Remove the stalks from the cherries but do not stone them. Toss them with a third of the sugar and spread them in a single layer in the dish.
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and stir in the remaining sugar. Mix well, drawing in the flour from the sides, then beat in the milk and vanilla, a little at a time, until you have a smooth batter (you can use a food processor for this). Pour over the cherries, and add a handful of the flaked almonds over the top. Bake for about 35 minutes, until lightly browned and puffed up like a Yorkshire pudding.
Best eaten lukewarm, or cold. Dust with icing sugar just before serving plain or with cream.

Tagged with cherries

Salmon & noodles with mirin dressing....dinner in 15 minutes

2006-12-08T08:27:00.000+11:00

I've finally got around to reading the December issue of Donna Hay magazine. It only arrived about 3 weeks ago, and it's not like I have many other pressing concerns stopping me from reading it! But while lazing about in the swimming pool a few days ago, Donna Hay in my wet hands, I noticed a '10 meals in 10 minutes' section about noodles. I don't eat a lot of noodles or pasta, but I do make an exception for soba noodles, which are made primarily of buckwheat (well, should be all buckwheat, but we're talking the ones you buy in supermarkets here!).
I also like salmon and am trying to eat more of it, in place of the red meat I love. It's so easy to throw a steak on the grill, with a few veggies or salad and have dinner ready in 10 minutes. Much quicker than pasta! This meal promised to be ready in 10 minutes, and featured Japanese flavours and salmon; all good things, especially in this sunny Melbourne summer.
It was a quick meal; probably more 15 minutes than 10, and I was very impressed. I made a few changes, in typical style:
-Didn't have soba noodles, but had something similar called 'multigrain noodles'. They also cook very quickly and have similar texture. They had them in the local Asian grocery and I was curious. They're good, but soba are better.
-I doubled the amount of sesame seeds, and toasted them for a minute or so. I wouldn't usually bother doing that, but now realise the difference it makes. Yum!
-Didn't bother taking off the salmon skin, cos I love it. Yes, it makes it fattier, but it's the fish equivalent of pork cracking! Mmmm.....pork crackling...
-Going to the cupboards for mirin, I discovered the bottle I had was no longer there. Hmmmm. Did a bit of Googling, and discovered a substitute for mirin is sake mixed with sugar. I thought that worked really well; for the 4 tablespoons of mirin in the recipe, I used 4 tablespoons of sake and 1.5 tablespoons caster sugar. I'd reduce that to 1 tablespoon in the future, but I don't like things too sweet.

Tastewise, this has a great combination of sweet, tangy and salty. I prefer salt to sweet, so would skew things in that direction a bit more next time. I'd also take my salmon off the grill earlier. I tend to undercook or overcook salmon; one day I'll get it right!!
Don't be tempted to skip the pickled ginger; it really makes the dish. My packet cost about $2 from a random Asian grocery store in Preston. It's easy stuff to find.
Read on for the recipe:

Salmon & soba noodles with mirin dressing
Enough for 2 (or 1 dinner, one lunch for work)

300g (10 oz) dried soba noodles
vegetable oil for brushing
2 x 150g salmon fillets, skin removed (I used 1 large fillet, skin on)
1/4 cup coriander (cilantro) leaves
salt & cracked pepper
Mirin dressing:
2-3 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
2 teaspoons chopped pickled ginger
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons mirin
salt & cracked pepper

Mirin dressing: Place sesame seeds, ginger, soy, lemon, mirin, salt & pepper in a bowl and stir to combine. Set aside;

Place noodles in a medium saucepan of boiling water and cook until ready. Soba noodles are quick, and should take about 3-5 minutes. Drain and set aside;
Brush the salmon with oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Heat a medium saucepan and cook salmon to your liking;
Place the noodles and half the mirin dressing in a bowl and toss to coat. Divide the noodles between bowls and top with the salmon, coriander and remainder of the dressing to serve.
Tagged with salmon

Locarno, Switzerland

2006-12-07T20:40:00.000+11:00

View of Madonna del Sasso church and the town of Locarno in the Swiss lakes district.
Our first stop in Switzerland was in the south, in the region called Ticino; Tessin in German. Looking at a map, Ticino is a little blip that extends south into Italy and seems unusually out of place; and historically the area was Italian, but it's been under Swiss rule now for hundreds of years. I love the way the locals have retained their Italianness; it's rare to hear any French or German spoken, unless by visitors from the other cantons.
To all intents and purposes it is Italian: they speak Italian, the climate is Mediterranean, it produces good wine, there's spaghetti and pizza on the menus and excellent gelati shops. However, it also has the neatness and order of the Swiss, a few more German and French signs and the cost of living of the Swiss. So, to us, even though we'd crossed a border it felt like we were still in Italy - until we saw the prices. Suddenly everything was 3 times more expensive. Welcome to Switzerland!

The city of Locarno is perfectly situated on a lake (part of the Italian & Swiss lakes district). Our original intent was to stay in Como and look for George Clooney but...helloooo expensive accommodation! Next idea was Lugano just over the Swiss border, but that was booked out. 3rd choice was Locarno and I'm so pleased that it came through as it was definitely a highlight of the trip. Half the town is built up the mountains nearby, and the other part along the lakeside. It has everything; beautiful old buildings, cobbled alleyways, a large piazza (home to the International Film Festival), yachting, a funicular and cable cars up the mountain. And a casino....where we didn't spend any time!

We went for a movie-star walk by the yachts in the lake at sunset and decided to shell out for a nice dinner at a hotel by the lakeside, rationalising that we were being billeted for the next few days and we wouldn't be paying for meals. After quickly eliminating lamb from our choices (do we want to take out a bank loan?!) we noticed that a local speciality seemed to be rotisserie chicken. Served either with french fries or risotto Milanese (!). Compared to what we'd just come from the dinner seemed pricey, but the food was spectacular and the view of the twinkling lights across the lake and into the mountains was beautiful.

Poultry for sale in a butchers. Heads and feathers intact. Pluck your own...hmmm!

Latest Swiss fashions. You really don't want to know the price....

We found an excellent chocolate shop near the entry to the funicular up to the Madonna del Sasso church. I think it was called Attuale, and I think it was a chain. I'm sure I saw one in Bern...or maybe Luzern. You could buy bags of mixed-flavour offcuts, which is great for somebody like me who can't make a decision and wants to try everything. The chocolate was excellent, as you'd expect from Swiss chocolate. Wish we had chains like this in Melbourne!
Belinda bought a slab of curry chocolate to hand around the bus, which grossed everybody out until they tried it. Milk chocolate with curry seeds sprinkled on top; surprisingly very good!

Piles of chocolate truffles from the same shop.

Market, main town square
I don't know if the local market in the main town square is a weekly event, but we happened to come across it in the morning, and spent some time wandering around. They had the usual trinkets, but the food was where it stood out. We tried everything from pastries, to cheese, to deep fried little fish from the lake to.....

...horsemeat salami. Mmmmm! Well, come on, I HAD to try it!! I knew it would scare people, but horsemeat is still eaten regularly throughout Italy and I wanted to have a taste. And, yeah, I was probably taking my health in my hands by buying unrefrigerated horse sausage covered in flies from a open air stand on a hot day, but I just peeled off the white layer -although I did first wonder if I was supposed to eat it- and took a bite. It wasn't bad at all...maybe a little hairy (OK, you didn't want to know that, did you?). It had a very rich, spicy flavour and felt quite fatty. Although it was small it was too much to eat, and after a few bites, mine sat in the back pocket of my bus seat for a few days while I forgot about it. Yeah, you don't want to know what it looked like a week later.....

A more palatable street-side purchase from a patisserie stand. My friend loves all things chestnut, and this little Mont Blanc cake made with chestnut puree was her dream (no warm horsemeat salami for her...) You even get a bonus view of the garish-coloured seats on our Italian bus - wow. This place was a chain and operated from a stand on the footpath. How I wish we had such a culture in Australia!
Tagged with Locarno

Parma

2006-12-07T18:56:00.000+11:00

On the way from Tuscany to Switzerland we stopped for lunch in Parma to check out the cheese. Witness the big Parmesan cheese on display on the street into the old part of town. I've edited out my friend posing beside it in a Homer Simpson drool. Mmm...big parmesan cheese.

Parma was bizarre. It was a weekday lunchtime but the whole town was completely dead! We only had about 90 minutes, so after a fairly mediocre pasta lunch (bit disappointing, that), we wandered around the streets. The Duomo was closed for lunch and there wasn't a single soul in the square or neighbouring streets. It was freaky, like a nuclear bomb had exploded and taken the entire Parma population with it. In reality, everybody was probably home having lunch and a siesta, but it gave a strange, other-worldly feel to the place. We also discovered it's possible to wander Parma without a map, and still find your way back to the bus.

Despite the fairly mediocre pasta from the cafe near the Duomo, they did a pretty good insalata caprese: tomato, mozarella, olive oil and herbs. Every example of this I tried in Italy was good; their tomatoes are just so much better than what we get here. It's hard to go back to lacklustre tomatoes now, and I do know at least one person who has switched to the expensive, vine-ripened variety since his return, even though it's causing pain in his hip pocket.
Some discussion on herbs: I know some of us were disappointed when the insalate came with dried oregano rather than fresh basil, but I think it's pretty standard. I've had it with dried herbs made by Italian relatives, so I don't think it necessarily means it's a more low-rent version (although in this cafe, it probably was!).

One of our friends decided to wander the local market instead of sitting down for lunch, and found a stall with interesting antipasti being made into rolls. Having had more than her share of bread and cheese in the past few days she waved her arms around and managed to indicate she just wanted fillings, not bread. Her point came across and she said it was one of the best lunches she had on the whole trip. Wish I'd joined her! Check out the other local food speciality: Parma ham. Ooooh yum.

Back on the bus, a few people who decided to sight-see rather than sit down for lunch had a picnic enroute. One guy had bought a container of local parmesan he passed around the bus. I took the shot with my phone to send to envious friends ('I'm in the Italian countryside enjoying local parmesan...such are the travails of my life...') as part of my series of SMS photos of European cheeses...
It was excellent cheese. The guy with the shirt sleeve took out his pocket knife and cut up a few local apples to eat with it. Perfect combination.

Confectionary garnering the most comment on the trip. The baboon's bum cake. Apparently a local Parma speciality that unfortunately resembled the genitalia of an ape. We all took bites of this, and naturally in totally mature, grown up style, have a series of 'bum eating' photos.
It was as sweet and garish as it looked. I have no memory of anybody volunteering to finish it!

Unusual soft-drink of the day: Fanta Chinotto flavour. I'm told it was very good. I love seeing examples of local tastes needing to be represented by multi-national companies. Can't see that Fanta marketing that bitter taste to the Americans!

Siena

2006-12-05T11:22:00.000+11:00

So, whereas I didn't have the most wonderful time in Florence, I had the opposite experience in Siena. Love it. Interesting, as the day we went was cool, grey and occasionally pouring down with rain. Plus we had to make our own way by the country bus services with drivers who yell at you (I'm Italian, I yell back) and with a lengthy stopover in the highly crapola town of Poggibonsi; a town as alluring as a homeless man's dribbly shirt. Lovely, helpful staff in the tourist office too...ahem! No clothes washing facilities in the town either, though the espresso was good at the bus station cafe!

But, Siena, when we finally got there, was gorgeous. I know it's a bit fashionable these days to rubbish Florence and prefer Siena (especially to people who only visit Florence), but it is the way I feel, and shared by many others in our group. For one thing, there was a total lack of African-immigrant-sidewalk-fake-handbag-sellers, which made it more relaxing straight away. But, also the winding, cobbled medieval streets rising uphill from the huge main square (the Campo, where the horse race is held twice a year) are perfect to wander through, and inevitable get lost in. We spent a bit on phone calls that day trying to locate which alley people had turned down, and eventually decided it was too hard to get everybody together for lunch, so my friend and I finally re-found the place I had had spotted an hour ago, and had been searching for since. All I can tell you is that it was in a small square near the Campo, on the way to the church where St Catherine's shrivelled head and dessicated thumb are preserved! (lovely pre-lunch viewing). And it was called Renzo, and run by quite rude people. We had to fight for a table from the nazi waitress woman who didn't want to serve people, while the locals rolled their eyes and whispered to us that they only come here for the food.

I was really keen to try some local specialities, and had heard about a local soup called 'ribollita' (i.e. reboiled). It's a thick soup full of vegetables, beans and bread. My friend decided to order it, feeling decidedly in need of vegetables, after a few days of cheese & salami feasts. She really enjoyed this hearty soup, but felt it needed to cook a bit longer to get the flavours really happening; it needed salt.

I ordered a wild boar stew, with vegetables and black olives. The olives tasted like not much, sadly. Like the black washers you get on pizzas. The meat was very interesting. I'd not tasted wild boar before, and imagined it would be really strong and gamey. Not at all; I could really taste that it was from the pig family, and it was just a little more strongly flavoured than chunks of pork. I tried wild boar several times afterwards, in Switzerland and the UK and each time the muted flavour was the same. But as stews go, it was really tasty.

I was also feeling the effects of a diet of cheese and bread, so ordered some roast vegetables, which were excellent. Eggplant, zucchini, capsicum, tomato, garlic...Tasted like something I'd cook at home when on a veggie kick, so I was happy.

Panforte and pasta in the Dolce Siena shop
After spending the afternoon being gobsmacked at the amazing Duomo (easily my favourite ever) and the absolutely incredible music manuscript library, with the most colourful painted ceilings I've seen, we wandered the town, watched local artisans making candles and bread, poked around shops and decided it was time for something sweet. At the bottom of the campo is a shop selling artisanal sweets and local produce. If you've been to Siena, you'll know what I mean when I say it's just to the right of the town hall.

Siena is famous for panforte; a sweetmeat made with lots of candied fruit. It's not nougat, but similar. I've had it with coffee before, and not enjoyed it much, but hey, I was in Siena and they were local so I bought one for our middle-of-the-campo-afternoon-tea. Even though it was drizzling and we were under umbrellas we were going to sit in the Campo and eat our sweets, goddammit!!!
This panforte was different. For one, it was chocolate - mmm. Also, it was very fresh. The ones we get in Australia are definitely not fresh; they've gone a bit hard and chewy, but this was soft and the flavours were clean. I loved it. The others were not so keen, so I got to eat most myself...hehehehe.

The others loved this: Siena is also famous for torrone, a soft, sticky nougat, made with egg whites, sugar and honey. This one was studded with huge chunks of chocolate. It was goood. It was also really sweet! I was happy with my panforte. And I was very happy with Siena.
That night we had a picnic in the hotel dining room of the bits and pieces we bought in town; we had everything from white peaches, to mozzarella fillled with fresh cream to local proscuitto to orange amaretti biscuits; a perfect way to end a excellent day.

Ortiz anchovies....the dream finally realised

2006-11-29T14:22:00.000+11:00

I finally get it (not that I'm paraphrasing Epicure, or anything). I really do. I finally understand what all the fuss is about.
I have been wanting to try the Spanish Ortiz anchovies for so damn long now. Every foodie thing I read raves about their meatiness, their sweetness, their general not-awful-like-a-pizza-ishness. So, a few months back, I hooked up with Plum and went on an expedition to Simon Johnston to spend a voucher I got for my birthday. Hmm - $150 at Simon Johnston doesn't get you very far! A 60g small bar of Valrhona was $10.
But I found me my Ortizs, just the regular size like you'd buy in a supermarket, and had a chat with the staff woman who said the best way to try them was just over some simple spaghetti with olive oil. So, at home today and at a loose end for lunch, I gave it a go.

Not one to just dump some mega-expensive anchovies on pasta, I pulled out some fine spaghettini. A simple dressing like this would be ruined by big, chunky pasta. Then I started by really slowly cooking a LOT of garlic in olive oil and butter. A small pinch of chilli. I didn't want the garlic to brown, so kept it as low as possible. While the pasta cooked, with hand shaking over the tin I opened the anchovies, carefully not spilling a drop of the platinum oil. Of course I had to have a taste - and yes, they are wonderful. Yes, they're soft and meaty and not crunchy and hard like the usuals. They're pinker and generally more appealing to look at. And they do have a sweetness to go along with the general anchovy saltiness. Now, when people said they were sweet, I was almost expecting them to NOT taste like anchovies, but the salty taste was still there. Yay! I love salt! I love anchovies! I love these expensive anchovies!
I melted just one into my garlicky, buttery oil. Threw the pasta into the pan and tossed it about, then added a few more achovies on top. Some of the anchovy oil and a squeeze of lemon juice to cut through it. Some cracked pepper. Then went outside into the beautiful sun, with a glass of chardonnay and enjoyed a rather excellent lunch.
The cost for my 50 gram tin of Ortiz anchovies?.....$15.
Have I left some for another occasion? You betcha.

*NB I saw them, as well as Ortiz tuna at the Spanish stall at the Borough market in London recently. About 7 pounds for the same tiny tin - expensive over there too!

Florence

2006-11-28T23:52:00.000+11:00

I hesitate to write it, but I'm not totally enamoured with Florence. Yes, it has glorous architecture and views and amazing art galleries, but it's also chronically crowded, overrun with tourists and a bit smelly. I thought this ten years ago, when I first visited, and my feelings are a bit stronger now. A few people I've spoken with agree that Florence doesn't seem like an Italian city; it's a city of foreigners and tourists. And thousands of damn annoying African immigrants crowding every piece of pavement trying to sell you fake designer handbags and bad commercial artwork. And yet, if you purchase their goods, it's you who will face trouble! A local told us there are signs up (??) around the city informing visitors that it is illegal to purcahse from these street-sellers and you will face a fine if caught. Hmm.
My photos of Florence tend to be filled with thousands of tourists. In the end I gave up and just started photographing the crowds of people. I think Belinda took a great shot of the queue to get onto the Ponte Vecchio! The photo above wasn't taken by me (I was probably ogling David's bottom at the time), but a friend who decided to go for a wander, and found a place selling excellent almond brittle; toasted almonds in toffee, that had enough smokiness to cut through the sugar. Yum! It was late afternoon, and evidently she'd found a quiet spot away from the crowds.

It was a hot day when we were there, and had chosen to spend some time sightseeing before our concert at the English church, not far from the Ponte Vecchio (just near the Ponte Santa Trinitas). Just off the Piazza del Duomo is a place selling pizza by the slice. It's not terribly cheap, but it was pretty good quality, particularly if you got one that had just come out of the oven. The tuna pizza on the left was really excellent; hot, juicy on top and crispy on the bottom with fresh basil and good tomato. The vegetable one on the right was not as succesful. It didn't have cheese and had been sitting around a bit, so it was lukewarm and dry - a bit like foccaccia with a few veggies on top. Didn't finish that one.

We were taken out for dinner by a group of eccentric expat Australians living in Florence, to a very good local restaurant that none of us would be able to find again, because we all got lost numerous times trying to find it! And, as we were eating another 5 course dinner at 11pm, after a day sightseeing in the sun, and a big concert, nobody took photos. What a shame - the fresh skinless salami we tried were incredible, as was the chicken liver crostini and perfect prosciutto. To live in my memory only...

The Tuscan Countryside

2006-11-27T17:27:00.000+11:00

We spent four nights in the Tuscan countryside, near the town of Barberino Val d'Elsa. From there we performed concerts in nearby Sant'Appiano and Florence, and made day trips to Florence and Siena. Unfortunately, apart from our first day in Florence, the weather was a bit grey, cool and drizzly. The day we spent checking out the town of Barberino was maybe the worst weather-wise, and it seemed the town was deserted! We kept running into members our our group wandering around the small town, and eventually we all ended up in the same sports bar for lunch (after I had an extended 'conversation' with the bar owner about sitting outside. He kept repeating a word which I thought meant 'outside' but when I eventually looked it up, meant 'dishcloth'!! No wonder we had mutual incomprehension!).

Before lunch we found ourselves at one of those wine & olive oil tasting places, set in the ruins of an old building that you find all over the place in Tuscany. For want of anything else to do (we asked at the tourist agency and they suggested going somewhere else...) we decided to do some tastings. When I checked out the olive oils (above) and noticed they were available for tasting, I didn't quite expect we'd be given a cup. Each. At 11am, not long after breakfast. After a few sips we were looking at each other in some panic, wondering what to do with the other 3/4 cup of oil! Although it was significantly queasy-making to do so, we chugged it back and hummed to ourselves. The oil was excellent, actually, and had it not been the start of the tour and we'd have to carry it round for weeks, we might have bought some. But a cup each was a bit much!
We tasted some wine as well, and followed the wine-dude out to the cave area we he fetched a few bottles for us to take to a party that evening. Again, lovely to taste, but whoa! Wine and oil straight after breakfast! Hoooee!

We ended up in a rather cool gourmet/organic shop, selling all manner of preserves, soaps and wines. At the back was a few tables, where we parked ourselves and our books for a large part of the afternoon. By our table was an amazing bowl of local cherry tomatoes. I think this is Belinda's photo - and it's excellent. I asked for a taste of one, and proceeded to sneak a few more throughout the afternoon! Italian tomatoes...no comparison!

When we felt it was time for afternoon tea, and our sweet teeth were calling to us, we asked the owner/lady what she had, and she offered us some torta. It was quite a plain cake, slightly dry in that way the Italians appreciate a bit more than us, but served with excellent apricot preserves, so the combination worked really well. The espresso we had with it was excellent too, in keeping with the standard we'd come to expect throughout Italy!

A few evenings earlier, after our Tuscan hillside concert, the choir and audience attended an incredible supper with outstanding food. It seems that I had a mental blank that evening and don't have photos, so I'll leave that event to Belinda who took some great shots.
The same woman who organised our concert and cooked for that supper also provided us with dinner the next night, at her hillside Tuscan villa. Yes, it was as good as it sounds, although we didn't sit outside under olive trees. It was late and drizzly so we had an inside Tuscan meal, but the quality and amount of food was wonderful.
Above you can see the salad table, with char-grilled zucchini, insalata caprese, various lettuce and bread, and an enormous hand-made ricotta that was unlike any ricotta cheese I'd tasted; so milky and delicate. She'd also made malfatti pasta with homemade pesto, roasted chickens, roast fennel, lentils with cumin and yoghurt, potatos with garlic and...ummm...other wondrous things. We drank a lot of wine. This might explain why I can't remember what other wondrous things we ate, or what we had for dessert!!
All up, our Tuscan experience was really made by this woman, who is, in fact, an Irish expat! She went out of her way to make us welcome, and must have spent days in the kitchen cooking for us. The way to a person's enduring love really is through their stomach!

Dinner leftovers after the locusts had descended

Chieti and Orvieto

2006-11-23T21:27:00.000+11:00

View of the Abruzzo countryside from my monastery room
From Rome we had a frantic, running-late bus ride to Chieti, about 3 hours away near the Adriatic coast. In retrospect, planning a concert on our second night in Europe, after a full-on two days was not the best decision! But the offer was made to us, and we were keen to get as many gigs as possible, so off to the Abruzzo we went., and with another religious order we stayed (this time old Italian monks).
I hadn't realised how green and mountainous that area of Italy would be; it's really beautiful, and after spending time in Tuscany and deciding it was a bit overrated and so famous because it's so well-known, I think this area is an overlooked gem. The mid-east coast of Italy is not widely touristy, but it has the incredible countryside and beautiful towns of the more famous northern areas. We only had 1 night, and barely got to see anything of Chieti apart from our walk from the bus to the church, and the church to the restaurant to have dinner at 11pm (yep, as per standart Italian-eating time). A four-course 11pm dinner after a big concert was really just perfect for our jet-lagged group. No, nobody nodded off in their antipasti at all. No, we don't have photos of anybody with their head on the table....!
Luckily, following the gaze of the local men with eyes on stalks, the television showing the Miss Italia 2006 quest managed to keep most of us awake enough to enjoy our dinner (when did all the Italian girls become blonde?!). And anyone who fell asleep during their first course, does not ever deserve to eat again. We were served quite simply, THE BEST LASAGNE IN THE WORLD!!

In Italy there are varying ways of making lasagne. My family, from the north, have made what most people know as traditional lasagne; with lots of cheese, bechemal and bolognese sauce. But in the south, they do a lighter, more tomatoey, less-cheesy version. My aunt, who married a southerner, makes this and I love it as well. This Chieti-lasagne was a southern version; there were sheets of silky-soft pasta, layered with a perfect tomato sauce and a little mozarella. Seriously, I dream of this lasagne. That would have been enough to win me over, but in between every third pasta sheet or so was a layer of hundreds of teeny tiny pork meatballs, about the size of your little fingernail!! These meatballs had amazing flavour and stayed moist surrounded by the tomato sauce. This blew me away. Imagine making those thousands of tiny meatballs, every day?! That's real cooking for love. That's Italy. I am in love with whoever made this lasagne. My nonna is under instructions to recreate it...

I crashed a local wedding outside Orvieto Cathedral...
From Chieti we headed north-west to Tuscany, with a lunch-stop on the way in Orvieto. For those who've been there, isn't it the most beautiful town! To get to it, you leave your car at the bottom of the cliffs and catch a funicular up to the pedestrianised town. The town has preserved its medieval feel, with tiny wandering alleys and cobblestoned paths, always with the tips of the cathedral peeking out of the light to help keep you oriented. Didn't help my friend and I, though, as we wandered further and further through the alleys (and even crashed a local wedding in the piazza).
We only had a short time in the town, and realised we wouldn't have time for a proper restaurant lunch, so made our way back to an enoteca I'd seen in one of the alleys off the main square; advertising a porchetta or prosciutto roll and glass of wine for 5 Euros. Bargain! It was one of those amazing artisinal food & wine places you find in Italy, with local foods and wines from the region. This was evidently a time of best-evers, because this porchetta roll was the stuff of dreams. Maybe even wet-dreams, if you're that way inclined. It was spectacular!

As you see, my roll was stuffed with freshly carved porchetta, complete with stuffing and fresh sage and thyme, and generous quantities of crackling. Ohmygawd, it was amazing! I even took my friends leftovers - how could he even think of leaving some?! I think I was in a sort of delirium afterwards (could have been the glass of good red) and couldn't shut up about 'the most amazing meal I just had'. The others, who'd ended up in a place serving packet pasta from a microwave looked at me narrowly. You know, I'd go back to Orvieto just to have another porchetta roll. Umm, and the architecture and stuff too.... ;-)
Antica Bottega al Duomo
Enoteca - Gastronomia - Prodotti tipici locali
di Mario Serboni
Via Maitani, Orvieto
Tel. 00763.344216

Roma, Roma

2006-11-23T20:03:00.000+11:00

Well, we hit the ground running in Rome. The group landed at 6.30 in the morning, and we were leaving at lunchtime the next day for our first concert, so had only 1.5 days to 'do' Rome. I had arrived in the evening before, so had the advantage of a few hours sleep in a real bed, but after getting to our convent hostel too early for rooms to be ready, everybody made a quick change and set out for the day. I don't think I could have done it. I know how I feel after a 30 hour flight, and tackling a big city in the late summer heat is not desirable!

Incidentally, accommodation in Rome is hideously overpriced and most often booked out, especially if you're travelling with a group in September, so I highly recommend staying at a convent-run guesthouse. Our hotel was run by Latino nuns, and was a 10 minute walk from the Colosseum. Yes, you'll have a curfew, but the rooms will be spotless! Our midnight curfew didn't pose any problems for this exhausted group on their first day.
So, straight off the plane, we hit the town. We checked out the Colosseum and the Roman Forum ruins. It was very hot. I loved this combination of low-rent snacks and high-rent architecture:

With admirable forebearance, our little group agreed to search out a highly recommended pizza place not far from Piazza Navona. Belinda and I led out group all over the city, in the sun, into alleys, out of alleys, into small piazzas, into big piazzas, all the while ignoring pleas to 'just stop at this pizza place. It looks fine'.
"NO!! This one's supposed to the best best!"
We had a lot riding on this amazing pizza place. But when we very eventually found the little street (and remember, everyone's straight off a 30 hour flight, unshowered, unslept and been traipsing through the 30 degree heat for 3 hours) it....umm.....wasn't there!!!!!! Yeah, we were SO popular.
However, it appears that the area around Piazza Navona is good for quality pizzas and we found some random place that didn't look full of tourists. In fact, it was full of workmen on their lunchbreak, which is a good sign. I know Belinda took a photo of the business card, but I think my card is in the enormous package of paperwork I posted home from London at the end of the tour and might eventually turn up by Christmas...

This was my choice, with tomato, mozarella, rocket, marinated capsicum, prosciuto and mushrooms. The tinned mushrooms on top were a bit random, but was otherwise excellent. I had forgotten about the really thin bases of Roman-style pizzas. They're so thin they're like toasted pita bread! I liked the way you didn't feel too bloated with dough after finishing a good-size pizza. Much easier on the digestion than eating a whole pizza for lunch in Australia!

Belinda's pizza was a bit richer, but very difficult to pass up. 4 cheeses, including a hefty chunk of gorgonzola, topped with zucchini flowers. Very tasty, and way-cheesy (in training for Switzerland?) but I think she may have left some unfinished; it was very full-on. Taste-wise, more interesting than mine, but not as kind to the system!
Keep reading for more Rome food...

The only recommendation we managed to find that first day in Rome was Caffe Sant'Eustachio; a caffe apparently making the best coffee in Rome. It was on our way from Piazza Navona to the Trevi Fountain, in the Piazza Sant'Eustachio. We walked past it a few times, and very nearly went into the wrong cafe before we realised which one it is. There's not much to set it apart, but when inside, their ordering system is interesting. There's a 3-step process involving placing an order, getting a ticket, collecting the coffee and going to pay. Not very Italian! But in true Italian fashion there's just organised chaos with people wandering around all over the place doing whatever they will.
We all went for espressos and were surprised to discover that sugar is automatically added to all the coffees. If you don't want sugar you have to make a special request when you place your order. In good Italian fashion we only noticed these signs at the cash register! A couple of the cofee-nazis in the group had already put me down for having sugar in my espresso, to which I would point out that Italians always have sugar in their espresso, and going without didn't mean they were doing anything manly, they were just being wankers! This just proves my point!
Yes, the coffee was good, but I'm not at the point were I can tell the difference between good coffee and excellent coffee, in Italy. Over there, all the coffee I had was excellent. Even the espresso I had at the bus terminal in the crapola town of Poggibonsi was fantastic! The dark little bar near our hotel, on Via Merulana, filled with suspicious, smoking locals and staffed by the requisite insouciant barista in tight pants made what I considered to be the best coffee, but that could be because I ingested about 8 of them in 36 hours!

We ended up at the totally overcrowded Trevi fountain and after a photo stop, started to look for San Crispino, the recommended-by-everyone gelati place. And whaddya know, in keeping with the theme of the day....we couldn't find it! I think a combination of the crowds and general exhaustion may have added to it, but we searched up and down and asked a combination of passers-by, shop-keepers and African immigrants selling fake Gucci bags, but nobody could tell us! So, we just grabbed something at a random place on the way to the Spanish steps.
However, that evening as we were coming home from dinner near our hotel and were sleepwalking down Via Merulana, we woke up enough to notice a gelati place; Gelateria Ornelli. This place was gooood! Their chocolate combinations included chocolate & pear, chocolate chilli and chocolate & mandarin and in the 3 times I visited in my 36 hours I tried them all. Their cinnamon gelati was also outstanding. Highly recommended!
Naturally, as I was walking down the street the next morning, after deciding that 11am wasn't too early to be eating chocolate chili gelati, feeling very sophisticated and Italian in my dark glasses walking the streets of Rome, I look down to discover I've dropped a blob of gelati right down the middle of my skirt. My pale beige skirt. My chocolate gelati. Yep, nothing to bring you back to reality like that! This girl's never going to be a sophisticated Roman...so with that, I went to Chieti.

My return, and friends in London

2006-11-16T13:54:00.000+11:00

Christmas lights on Oxford Street, London, the first night they were lit, 9 Nov.
I'm finally back down here in Melbourne, and to be completely honest about it, a bit bummed out about that. After 2 months of travelling through beautiful cities with friends, eating good food and doing whatever you want when you want, it's certainly a sharp shock to come back to reality! I came back a few days ago, but it took a while to even consider turning on the computer (with the knowledge there'd be 8 weeks worth of emails waiting) and I haven't much felt like blogging!
I had plans to update when I was over there, but after 2 weeks had passed and I was having so much fun, sitting down at a computer was the last thing on my mind! That feeling continued for the whole trip; the longest I've been away from a PC since I was a child.
Needless to say, it was a fabulous trip and I can't wait to return. It was difficult to say goodbye to the choir after nearly 4 weeks together in Italy, Switzerland and England, but spending time on my own around the Czech Republic and Germany was just as wonderful. As long as you always have a book in your bag for a dining companion, travelling on your own is no problem! Thank you Michael Palin for many memorable dining experiences...
After our concert in London I caught up with Johanna, from The Passionate Cook, and Jeanne from Cooksister, who I was thrilled to find in the audience. Really, when you're over the other side of the world, it makes it so special to recognise somebody in the crowd. I had already met Johanna after my last trip to Europe in 2004, and actually stayed with her parents in Linz for a few nights, but I'd not met Jeanne before; we had a lot to talk about! We went out for dinner that night to a new pizza place, which I would write about, except that Jeanne has already put up a great post about our experience, including a photo of the three of us, post-pizza. Her photos are better than mine, anyway! (My flash died right in the middle of the tour of the Cailler chocolate factory in Switzerland 2 weeks earlier - aaargghgh!)

I caught up with Johanna and Jeanne again last week, when I was back in London for a few days, and we went to a wild mushroom and truffle tasting evening at Harvey Nichols. Very swish! An interesting evening; we sat around the 5th floor food hall, and heard demonstrations from a wild mushroom distributor (most going to Harvey Nicks come from Scotland) and the representative from L'Aquila, a truffle and truffle goods distributor. Both offered tastes of their products. Mr Mushroom Man cooked up a pile of wild mushrooms with butter and garlic and served them on crisped Italian flatbread brushed with truffle oil. These were excellent. If Mrs Truffle women was hoping to lure us into parting with our cash to purchase her truffle goods, she didn't do a very good job. A very sad tray of canapes was delivered to each table, and none of them did justice to the truffles. It's telling that none of us bothered to get our cameras out. Truffle-infused polenta shapes were cold and unseasoned, scrambled egg tarts with chopped truffle were bland and croutons with truffle paste had been prepared hours before and were dry and cold. Hmmmm. The cherry tomato garnish was great.... However, we did get to handle a box of white summer truffles (about $1000 worth, I'd say), learnt about the different sorts of truffle and their varied flavours, and tasted a few shavings of a black winter and summer varieties. Accompanying the wild mushrooms was a glass of Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2005 (still a bit light) and with the truffles, an Italian Barbera.

The highlight of the evening was the goodie bag we got to take home at the end, with a bottle of Harvey Nicks truffle-infused olive oil, a jar of Harvey Nicks wild mushroom sauce (looking forward to playing with that), a bottle of pomegranate and blueberry juice, which I drank before getting on the plane to Australia and a packet of very unusual Tyrells apple chips from Herefordshire. I'm munching on these at the moment; they have the texture of potato crisps, but are sweet and dusted with cinnamon. I'm definitely a fan. They would have been a good garnish for something if I hadn't just gobbled up my packet then...
Christmas goods were out in force around London, so I also picked up a tin of Harvey Nicks Christmas blend tea, which smells like festive pot-pourri, and a box of the best crumbly fudge in the world, which I'd previously discovered at the Borough Market. More on that to come...
Think it's time for another jet-lag nap now....!

Europa!

2006-09-19T09:39:00.000+10:00

Well, after 2 years in the planning, it's finally come to departure day. Tonight I'm jetting off to Rome for my vocal ensemble's second European tour. We started organising this soon after we returned in 2004 (and coincidentally, I started this blog straight after I came back from that trip) and it still doesn't feel like it's really happening....today!
After touring and singing with them in Italy, Switzerland and the UK for about 4 weeks (itinerary), I'm travelling to the Czech Republic and Germany on my own, then meeting my mum in England for a driving tour of the Cotswolds and Wales. I'll be back in mid-November. 8 weeks: certainly the longest time I've been away so far!
I really have no idea what the blogging situation will be like. Perhaps when I have some free time on my own I'll get to an internet cafe and do a few posts, but I'm pretty sure they'll be without photos. You'll have to hold on until I get back for that!
So....see you on the other side!

Apple Apricot Cinnamon & Allspice cake

2006-09-13T15:13:00.000+10:00

This is a variation of something I found in Tessa Kiros' very beautiful cookbook, Falling Cloudberries. This book includes family recipes from the various countries she has lived in throughout her life. She has an exotic lineage; a Finnish mother and a Greek Cypriot father, so she includes Finnish and Cyriot chapters, as well as recipes from South Africa, where she grew up, Greece, where family lives, and Italy where she currently has her home. The final chapter is a collection of recipes from around the world. It's a good book to have on your coffee table to flick through, and the photography is beautiful.
This is cake recipe I found in the South African section; in the book it is actually a pineapple upside-down cake, but she notes that you can use any fruit you like. I didn't have pineapple, but I did have canned apricots and fresh apples, so I used those instead.

My cake didn't look nearly as picturesque as her pineapple version. It was a bit wet and flabby looking on top when I turned it out, so I put it under a hot grill for a few minutes to get some crispage happening - a bit of crunchy caramelisation of the sugar syrup. It helped the texture and improved the presentation a bit.

I thought the cake part lacked a little sweetness, actually. Perhaps if you're using less sweet fruit, like apples you might need to add a little extra sugar to the batter. You wouldn't need to with sweet pinepples. Also, I found this cake just a tad too buttery. It uses a whole block of butter in the cake, plus more for the syrup and left your fingers and mouths a bit oily. When warm, that wasn't so bad, but when it cools down it might taste a little greasy? In my opinion you could cut down on the butter in the cake batter.

This was still warm when I served it on a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon. And I have to admit that after a few bites, somebody turned to me and said:
"Niki, this cake makes me HAPPY inside!"
Well, you can't ask for better than that, can you?
Read on for the recipe:

Apple & Apricot Cinnamon & Allspice cake
Adapted from Tessa Kiros, Falling Cloudberries

Spice Mix:
5 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
6 allspice (pimento) berries or 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
Rind of half a lemon

Syrup:
Juice of 1 orange
60g (2 1/4 oz) butter
70g (2 1/2 oz) brown sugar
I tin of apricots
1-2 apples, peeled, halved and sliced thinly.

Cake:
250g (9 oz) softened butter
200g (7 oz) brown sugar
3 eggs
250g (2 cups) cake flour or plain (all-purpose) flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
185 ml (3/4 cup) milk

-Preheat oven to 200C (400 F). Make spice mix by grinding ingredients in a spice or coffee grinder and grind to a coarse dust (or use already ground spices to make things easier)
-Make syrup by putting orange juice, butter and sugar in a small pan with 1/2 teaspoon of the spice mix and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes until you have a thick caramel syrup
-Line a 24cm springform tin with tinfoil, so the bottom and sides are covered. Press the foil flat against the bottom and sides so it won't press into the cake. Place the fruit at the bottom of the tin, in a single layer, in an attractive pattern (I placed apricots around the edge and tried to make a central spiral of the apples).
-Make the cake batter by whisking the butter with electric beaters until fluffy and then beat in the brown sugar. Beat the eggs one at a time, then add the flour and baking powder. Mix to combine. Add the milk to thin the mixture. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of the spice mix and combine.
-Pour the syrup over the fruit in the tin, making sure that it covers fairly evenly, then spoon the cake batter over the syrupy fruit and smooth the top. Bake for ~1 hour 20 minutes, reducing the temperature to 180C (350F) after 10 minutes and covering with foil after an hour. The cake should be a deep gold colour. Leave to cool slightly before turning out onto a serving platter. Remove the bottom of the tin, and peel away the foil.
-Serve with creme fraiche, ice cream or slightly sweetened whipped cream, or on its own, very slighly warm.
Tagged with baking

"A Taste of Slow" Food Festival

2006-09-10T16:31:00.000+10:00

Abbotsford Convent courtyard
Well, there's certainly been a bit of blogging about this weekend's Slow Food Festival already, so I should get in with my photos and thoughts! Yesterday Belinda and I spent the day at 2nd A Taste of Slow at old Abbotsford Convent, and wandering around the Collingwood Childrens' Farm market. Belinda has already provided a great wrap-up of what we did, so instead of doubling up, please do check out what she's written about what we got up to.

We arrived about 11am, after grappling with the hoardes and decided to go to the Collingwood Childrens' Farm market first. I think half of Melbourne turned up, which is great for the event. We hadn't yet had breakfast, and I guess we should have first taken a wander and sussed what we wanted to eat, but when we saw the menu at the Farm Cafe we were sold. There was a bit of a queue and a 20 minute wait for coffees, but my breakfast bagel arrived within minutes. Belinda had to sit there watching me croon over the perfectness of my food, waiting for hers to come out. Eventually. AND mine didn't have a moth in it! I guess you really know it's organic lettuce when the moths are happy to eat it too....
Great bagel - one of the best I've had. The slightly sweet bread works well with the salty bacon and cheese. Poached egg - fine. The tomatoes had real tomato flavour (bonus!) and even this relish-hater loved the relish. Good for $6. The cafe's a permanent feature, so do make a visit.

A wander around the stalls. Isn't it a great setting for a city market? You'd hardly believe you were only streets away from industrial inner-city factories and major roads. We stopped at every stall and tried as many things as possible. I liked the jelly bean topping Belinda bought - which had ouzo in it for that real black jelly bean flavour. I bought a goats cheese called "Sensation" from the Red Hill Cheese. We would have liked to buy much more, but we're going overseas in a week and couldn't justify too many food purchases.

Up to the convent to enter A Taste of Slow. It would have been a good thing if they had large signs or pamphlets describing what the Slow Food Movement is all about. In a queue for the toilets I overheard some girls saying they thought the Slow Food Festival was all about casseroles and stews, and were pretty disappointed they hadn't found anyone offering casserole samples! I wanted to go up to them and explain the premise behind Slow Food, but I decided I'd come across as a bit of a nob, so I left them alone.
No, it's not about Slow Cooking, but slow food - as in the opposite of Fast Food. It's about taking the time to enjoy good food, grown well and cooked well. That food can be anything, not just stews and casseroles. It's also about maintaining regional recipes and culturally diverse food. The Slow Food Movement was established in Italy as a protest against a the opening of a McDonald's franchise. Why McDonald's when the local cuisine is so good? Why run the risk of losing those old recipes and our culture to a dull, standardised menu found all over the world?
So, yes, their mascot is a snail. It was pretty funny to see Belinda nearly run down by that very snail when she was looking the other way. LOL! This one wasn't so slow!
Incidentally, we were wondering if A Taste of Slow festivals were held in any other Australian cities. Anyone know the answer?

What a pity we'd already eaten. These were the lunch options at the indoor eating area. Various restaurant chefs were responsible for the canteen lunch each day. Not bad for the price!

A wandering folk trio, adding to the atmosphere.

Henry of Harcout ciders. We weren't taken by their apple or pear ciders, but the man doing the tasting was very entertaining. We weren't the only ones who thought this. As we were picnicking on the lawn later on a friend came up and announced "I've fallen in love! But I don't know whether it's with the cider or the man selling it!!"
If you're in the apple-growing Harcourt area (near Bendigo) and want to try some cider, I can recommend Bress Wine, Cider and Produce. I did a post on their cider last year - just like champagne but with an apply aftertaste. Yum!

Australia's doyenne of cookbooks, Stephanie Alexander. I feel like I've seen the queen now! Our friend told us she went up to get a book signed and she turned into a babbling, star-struck teenager who couldn't say much more than her name ("why would she care what my name is?!") and that she loved her books ("like, she's never heard that before! Oh, god, she probably thought I was an IDIOT!!!"). I choked with laughter on my gourmet rhubarb muffin hearing that. To think a cookbook writer can turn grown women to jelly, just like a rock star! (I could sympathise- I turned into a blathering idiot when I met Bill Bryson. Proves you don't need looks to be sexy!)

In the courtyard we saw people with boxes of fresh asparagus and packets of oysters. We still weren't hungry but when we realised they were coming from the "Taste of Tasmania" stall and they were doing tasting plates, we had to give it a go. For $12 you got the plate above, which included:

"get shucked" Pacfic Ocean oyster with Thorpe Farm wasabi mignonette
Scallop ceviche with a saffron rouille
Stripey Trumpter soused with cider seaweed
Bruny Island Cheese Co.'s O.D.O. (one day old cheese)
John Bignall's sheep's milk blue on rye with Julian Wolfhagen leatherwood honey

Seafood and cheese - who'da thunk it? The seafood was incredible, the cheeses were even better. My doctor told me to cut down on cheese. What does he know of the pleasure I get from it?!? Belinda's written what we thought of the platter - check it out.
Apparently the platter from the New South Wales tent included long sausages, venison and quail. That would have been worth trying!

We ended up finding a group of friends and picnicking on the lawn until the rain came, before taking shelter in the covent bakery and sampling some chocolate truffles. Yummy unusully flavoured chocolates we bought from the Collier Chocolate man. Swiss couverture with all kind of fillings; we decided to give the Picked Ginger and Wasabi truffles and the Cocksucking Cowboys a go (Butterscotch Schnapps and Baileys Irish Cream). Very, very good. Our favourite was the ginger and wasabi. Couldn't taste any wasabi, except for maybe a bit of heat on your palate, but the ginger ganache and dark chocolate were a sublime combination. I'd drive to Bendigo to get more!!

A great day with good food, surrounded by like-minded people. And it didn't even hail!

Va Tutto

2006-09-04T14:08:00.000+10:00

I've been meaning to post about this restaurant since last DECEMBER! I even have a photo dating from our Christmas lunch, which we celebrated here in 2005. I've mentioned I'm a bit lazy....now do you believe me?!
I love this restaurant, and it happens to be our local 'fine dining' place - literally not more than a 2 minute drive away, in Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe, despite being a nice, leafy, middle-class sort of suburb has always been lacking in dining choices. Uninspiring, to be more precise. In the past few years an excellent Indian (Cafe Saffron) and Thai resaurant (Bussaracum) have made themselves very popular, but for a 'nice' meal or a special occasion, people around here generally went across the river, or into the inner suburbs. But now we have Va Tutto, and the people of Ivanhoe are very happy. Actually, Stephen Downes of the Herald-Sun, recently named Va Tutto as 2006 "Restaurant of the Year", with a score of 19/20. Surely a little part of his reasoning has to do with the fact that he lives in Ivanhoe and has long lamented the lack of good places to eat!

I think Va Tutto's owners, Paul and Myrto Recinella, could see this culinary black hole they could fill. They both live in the area and have a long history of running a successful establishment; their previous place, Zio's, in East Melbourne was a favourite of my dad's. I wish he could sample what they're now doing close to home. You know they're serious about this current quest, because they paid an exorbitant amount to import and install a custom-designed kitchen set-up from Italy.
Each time I go past Va Tutto it seems to be full. There are 3 sections to the place; the restaurant, done out in white leather and with a sumptuous 'let's dress up for dinner feel', the more everyday bistro at the front and a casual area for coffee which includes an outdoors terrace. I think it's because they address the various needs of customers that they seem to be so successful.

So to the food. Well...in the three times I've dined here they've all been in the formal restaurant section. Well, la-di-dah to me! Yes, I'm very fortunate. Our extended family had Christmas lunch here last year, then I returned for lunch on my birthday in March, and then a dinner for my mum's birthday in July. Each time I'm spoilt for choice with the menu, which covers everything from Italian tripe to Asian seafood, but with an emphasis on European tastes. Here's a selection of photos from those 3 times I've visited.

From my birthday lunch. The spicy salt & pepper calamari; my mum's favourite choice from the entree list, and she has to fight the urge to order it each time. The calamari is the most tender we've tasted.

My entree from my birthday; octopus terrine with a radish salad. I don't know what they used to keep the terrine together, but it was very clean, and not gelatinous at all. The octopus wasn't tough, either, which pleased me. Perfect light flavours for the warm day it was.

My mum's main course from my birthday. Thai-flavoured fish cakes and fresh prawns. This is mum's favourite main course, and what she wants to order each time we return. I can understand why; the flavours are amazing. Lots of kaffir lime, coriander, citrus. Great balance of flavours. I remember my grandmother going into orgiastic raptures when she ordered this at Christmas! It's quite light though, so maybe not the best if you're a big eater...

...As I am. While mum was nibbling on her prawns, I had ordered ox cheek. "Goodness, you're adventurous!" said Myrto (who handles front-of-house) when I ordered this after my octopus. Well, no, I don't think I am, but maybe that's the case out here in the suburbs! This was an incredible dish, full of big, gutsy flavours. I get the feeling that the person who created this loves to eat winter food. For me it was perfect: sticky ox cheek, creamy mashed potatoes, bits of vegies for freshness and a rich, winey sauce. It's quite filling, though.

This is what my godmother ordered: a good veal scallopine. My godmother is a real Italian chick, and knows her Italian food. She said she'd ordered one the week before at a place in Carlton and it was so awful she wanted to improve on the experience. Luckily she wasn't disappointed. I think she said it was one of the best scallopine she'd tasted (other than her mum's of course!). I did a bit of an exchange with her, and agree this was excellent; the mushrooms and the marsala-spiked sauce were perfect. Incidentally, this was one of the cheaper dishes on the menu: about $22.

Back to Christmas day, 2005. I only took one photo - of the dish I had ordered - as I didn't want to butt into everbody's festive meals, but it was so interestingly presented I had to whip out the camera. This is their Duck Tasting Plate, for which they've become known. I don't think it will be taken off the menu any time soon. I'm a big fan of duck, so I loved this. I was a tad disappointed when it came out because it didn't look substantial enough to fill me up, but what I always forget is that rich flavours satisfy you quickly, and by the end of this I was copying the rest of the family in the festive, post-lunch groan-athon. Also on that Christmas Day menu was the most amazing steak I didn't order. Instead I kept attacking the plates of my male relatives. It had been hung and aged, and suddenly I understood what all those food writers have been going on about when they talk about aged meat. It's just incredible!
Top left is a duck spring roll with a sweet hoisin sauce, top right is sliced duck breast in master stock. Bottom left is duck leg in an incredible coconut curry and bottom right is the Euopean presence; a duck arancini with mozarella. Innovative, tasty and presented with the right amount of theatrical flair. One of their most popular dishes.

As is this dish, I believe. These dishes are from my mum's birthday dinner in July (hence the bad light!). This is their Seafood Tasting Plate. Mum and I ordered this because we were in a light, fish mood and thought it wouldn't be too heavy. With that in mind, I ordered a lobster risotto for entree (gorgeous!!!) which was fairly filling. Then THIS came out. Hell's Bells! This had everything on it from fresh oysters with lime, prawn dumpling, deep fried scallop and calamari and home-made tartare, an enormous breaded king prawn, a large piece of fish (can't remember what!) and Japanese marinated raw salmon. That would have been enough, but the centrepiece of the dish was a big bowl of really excellent Asian seafood stiry-fried noodles; wok-seared flat noodles with lots of prawns, rock ling, lime, chilli and Thai basil. It would be a very popular dish on its own.
I thought this meal was incredible, but had two reservations. One was the sheer size of it; it seemed designed to overwhelm. Certainly wasn't the light, healthy meal I had imagined! Also, some of the taste combinations on the one plate didn't complement each other very well; the creamy sauces didn't work too well with the Asian flavours in some of the other components. Also, you had to remember to eat your deep-fried things first before they got cold and yucky. But I saw lots of these going out to tables and I think it's one of their most popular dishes.

After seeing our seafood plates, my godmother had a severe case of food-envy but she was still very impressed with her seared tuna. It was served on a bed of...something I can't recall, but it looks orange. Pretty sure it wasn't polenta. I would have asked for a taste, but I was serious tackling-the-mountain-on-my-plate mode! I like the plate they used.

Back to my birthday lunch for dessert photos. This is a pandan and coconut flavoured creme brulee. Pandanus (or Screw Pine) is used extensively in South-East Asian cooking but I've only tasted it in savoury dishes before now. Its fragrant, fruity & nutty flavour was incredible. As were the sesame seed wafer and coconut sorbet accompaniments. In fact, the coconut sorbet was truly the best I've ever tasted and we all fought for spoons of it. What a way to combine East and West! This was ordered again for dessert at mum's birthday; it's so unusual and works so well I hope it stays on the menu.

My birthday dessert. Valrhona chocolate & zabaglione parfait. Apologies for getting stuck in before remembering to take a photo. Ahem! This was not overly sweet, which is a good thing in my book. But it was very rich & creamy, especially after a big bowl o' ox cheeks. In hindsight, I should have ordered something lighter (coconut sorbet springs to mind). But it came out with a birthday sparkler on it, so I was happy. :-)

Mum went for an affogatto: a shot of espresso coffe, a shot of liquer of your choice (Amaretto for her) and a bowl of icecream. You're supposed to add the coffee and liquer to the icecream and eat it up before it all melts, but mum takes the separate element approach and was still eating her dessert after we'd long finished!

Va Tutto is one of my favourite restaurants at the moment, not only for the interesting, well-prepared food, but also because it is so close to home. You don't always want to drive out for dinner; parking issues and drink driving spring to mind. But this place is close to home, so we can enjoy a pre-dinner, and even a post-dinner drink without much effort at all. I also think it's quite reasonably priced for the quality of food; most mains are around the mid to high-$20s mark. It's the wine which will bump up the cost of your meal. I haven't yet tried the more affordable bistro, but I'm hoping to get there soon. I know the owners were stunned when they were named restaurant of the year, and I hope it keeps them enthused and inspired to keep providing the people of north-eastern Melbourne a high quality dining experience!

Va Tutto
226 Upper Heidelberg Road
Ivanhoe Victoria 3079.
(03) 9499 7769 or (03) 9499 1430
Lunch from Sunday to Friday (midday – 3pm) Dinner 7 days (6pm – late).

Translucent apple tart

2006-08-30T16:51:00.000+10:00

The smell when this is baking is utterly DIVINE. It's just a very simple apple tart with nothing special in its ingredients, but golly gosh and darn it if it isn't mouth-wateringly fabulous.
It's another Nigella special which, like most of her recipes, is adapted from another source: this time one of the doyennes of English cookery, Jane Grigson (her daugher, Sophie, who I find rather umm...scary, has her own TV cooking shows now).
The reason for the 'translucent' in the title is because the custard filling is made using melted butter instead of cream or milk, and is similar to what those in southern USA call a transparent pie. Rather than a chunky apple pie, this is light and delicate.
The other unusual thing about it, is that the apple is grated to make the filling, which was a bit of fun. The recipe calls for 1 apple, but I found that amount to be a bit meagre, plus I had a whole bowl of apples to use. In fact, I would consider doubling the filling next time, because it actually made a very shallow tart. Good for girls watching their calorie intake, but not for filling a hungry-hole!
You'll notice my pastry is a bit overcooked; I don't know if it's because I used Nigella's sweet pastry, which is totally delicious and I challenge you to not eat it all before you cook it (it's just like raw shortbread dough...mmmmm!). It's very high in butter, and I think my oven was a bit hot; hence the burning. If you have a fan-forced oven, maybe lower the temperature a bit for this delicate tart.
Read on for the recipe:

Translucent Apple Tart
from 'How To Eat,' Nigella Lawson, adapted from Jane Grigson's 'Fruit Book'.

1 quantity of sweet pastry, enough to line a shallow 23cm flan tin.
60g salted butter
60g caster sugar
few drops vanilla extract (or use vanilla sugar)
1 egg
1-2 apples, peeled and grated - preferably sour i.e. Granny Smith.

-Preheat oven to 210C
-Melt butter and sugar together over a very low heat, so they are barely warm. Remove from stove and beat in the egg.
-Add the grated apple and stir thoroughly into the butter mixture. You may prefer to wait until last minute to peel and grate the apple, to prevent any browning.
-Pour and spread over the pastry-lined tin and bake for about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Lower the heat for 180C and cook a fruther 15-20 minutes until golden on top.
-It is best to wait until the tart has settled a little before eating it. Warm is better than hot, but cold is also good.
Tagged with baking

(Vegetarian) Eggplant Moussaka

2006-08-24T12:13:00.000+10:00

NB: Description of and other uses for pomegranate molasses here: berry cakes, pistachio cakes, Tarte Tatin and salmon kebabs.

I made this a few weeks ago when I was trying out a few healthy/low-fat dishes from Nigella's How To Eat. I was looking for a lamb stew to cook for a meeting being held at my house, so I was flicking through the Cooking in Advance chapter and fell upon this. It's not moussaka as I've always had it: eggplant with minced lamb and creamy bechamel, but a vegetarian Lebanese version, like a ratatouille with pomegranate molasses. I love eggplant and I love the tart sweetness of pomegranate molasses (makes a wicked summer drink mixed with soda water), plus the whole recipe was vegetarian, which appealed to me: I could eat this on its own or as a side dish when I was craving meat (which is often! Sometimes I wonder if I'm more closely linked with the cavemen than other girls!).

It's dead easy to make, especially if you use tinned tomatoes, which I can always justify, especially when it's the middle of winter. The only thing is, the main aspect that piqued my interest in the recipe, the pomegranate molasses, was the bit I didn't like! The whole dish came out too sweet. I thought it was just me, because I'm not one for sweet-tasting savoury food or sweet & sour anything (chutney - bleah!) but a few others had the same thought: too sweet, almost like vegetable dessert. I had doubled the recipe, so used 3 tablespoons of the molasses. I'd recommend adding it in small quantities and tasting as you go. You can always add more, but taking it away was a challenge. I found that adding plain yoghurt or sour cream helped with flavour, and also with the slight acidity from the tomatoes. Maybe longer cooking was needed for that, but watch that your eggplant doesn't completely turn into mush.
If you have it, definitely add fresh coriander at the end. Great flavour.
So, taste and go carefully the first time you do it and I think you'll like it. It's certainly something useful to have in the fridge.
Read on for the recipe:

Eggplant Moussaka
Adaped from Nada Saleh's "Fragrance of the Earth" via Nigella Lawson.

500g eggplants
5 tablespoons olive oil
1-2 onions (about 250g), peeled and sliced thinly
10-12 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole, or cut thickly
150g chick peas, soaked, rinsed, drained and precooked (tinned is fine for me!)
1 1/2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
500g tomatoes, rinsed, peeled, seeded and quarted (or tinned!)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoons allspice
1/4 teaspoon cracked pepper
200ml water
parsley, coriander or mint.

-Trim the eggplants and peel "to look like Edwardian circus tents" - i.e. leaving lengthways stripes about 1 1/4 cm wide.
-In a large, wide pan heat 3 tablespoons oil over medium heat and saute the eggplant for a few minutes until lightly browned. Remove to a side dish lined with kitchen paper.
-To the empty pan add the remaining oil, onions and garlic and saute, stirring constantly, until pale and soft - about 5 minutes. You may need to add more oil.
-Add the chickpeas and stir occasionally for 5 minutes, then add the pomegranate molasses.
-Return the reserved eggplants to the pan and add the tomatoes, salt, cinnamon, allspice and black pepper then add the water. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to moderately low. Cover and simmer for about an hour. If using a large, shallow pan they may be ready after 45 minutes.
-Serve warm or cold, sprinkled with chopped parsley, coriander or mint and a dollop of plain yoghurt.
Tagged with eggplant

Kit Kat Milkshake!

2006-08-18T23:41:00.000+10:00

Remember that series I did earlier in the year about the funny Kit Kat flavours I found in Japan? What fun we had! Well, amongst the many comments I received from you, telling me in detail about what Kit Kat flavours you could get in your country (bastards!) somebody emailed me and offered to send me some from the USA!!! How cool is that? What a legend! I was more than keen to try some more Krazy Kit Kats, and since then we've started up a bit of a cross-cultural confectionary exchange. Very cool. Just for the record - I'm very open to offers from other readers.... ;-)
I feel guilty, because it's been months since I received these, but you all know I'm lazy. This fabulous reader sent me example of a Milkshake Kit Kat and Kit Kat Triple Chocolate in miniature and a King Size Crispy model because, as she wrote, "Americans just aren't fat enough!"
She also sent (and this was the highlight for me) something like 10 pounds of different flavoured Hershey's Kisses. I love this woman. I love Hershey's Kisses, and yes I know the chocolate quality sucks and yes, I know, it makes me cough, but I still love it. In my package I received plain, dark chocolate, cherry cordial (ooh!), peanut butter and caramel. The cherry cordial ones were funky - in a bad way. They tasted just like that cherry flavoured cough syrup all Aussie kids had to take when they were young. Ewwww. The peanut butter flavour tasted just like Reese's pieces (mmmm), but my favourite was the plain. There must have been something like 1000 kisses (slight exaggeration) and I'd say they were all I lived on for about a week. Fabulous.

But what did I think of the Kit Kats? Well, I have to say I wasn't terribly excited by the Triple Chocolate. Just chocolate wafer and chocolate cream covered in chocolate. Not so different from a standard Kit Kat. The chunky version was an over-the-top late night snack I really should have portioned and allocated one piece a day, but instead I gobbled up the whole thing. Pretty sweet. I think the use of corn syrup in American confectionary really reveals itself in sweetness levels. I tend to find American candy a bit too sweet for my taste, but I don't have much of a sweet tooth, anyway.
More exciting was the Milkshake flavour. Interesting. It had a noticeable taste of malted milk powder, which was pretty enjoyable. Not on par with the flavour intensity of the Japanese bars (but nothing can surpass the world leaders in this arena!) but certainly tasty. It had a weird effect on me though....it made my mouth go numb!! Seriously, I couldn't feel my tongue or cheeks. Hmmm -you know what? I'm really not sure that's the sort of effect you're supposed to have from a bit of candy! Very weird. In a brief flash of panic, I even wondered if my reader was some mad stalker who had tampered with the chocolate so to add to her list of people she'd killed through candy (sorry V.!!!). Very weird.

So, ratings:
Triple Chocolate: 6 out of 10 (innocuous)
Milkshake: 7 out of 10 (but way less if you consider the whole mouth anaesthetic weirdness!)
Assorted Hershey's Kisses: 1000!!!
Thank you V. for such a kind gesture. You know how much I appreciated it. :-)

Chocolate techniques

2006-08-17T14:30:00.000+10:00

Well, look at what I made! My contribution to the world of John Paul Gaultier. Or maybe a template for a Spring Racing Carnival hat.
There must be ohh.....at least a kilo of chocolate on that cake, and I put it all there myself. The baking shop where I did my hands on bread baking class also offers a class on chocolate decorating techniques, and that's where I found myself this morning, covered head to toe in melted chocolate, and rapidly getting over the whole idea of stuffing as much as I could into my gaping maw. I can tell you, after the first vat of melted chocolate gets poured over the table, and everyone's eyes turn to saucers while they calculate how much of it they can get in to their mouth instead of on their cake, that enthusiasm dims. I reckon it took about half an hour before we were ignoring our chocolate offcuts. Hard to believe, isn't it? Helped by the fact the chocolate wasn't top quality. In fact, at this very moment I'm so over chocolate that I have no interest in even tasting the overload I created! Nothing like gorging to excess to get you over something.

In the 4 hour class we learnt a variety of techniques - all of which ended up on our cake. Naturally, if you were doing a cake yourself you'd tone down on your creations, but we were trying to experience as much as possible. We learnt how to roll marbled chocolate fondant (looked amazing - like zebra skin, but now hidden underneath all the other chocolate stuff!!), create a patterned chocolate collar, how to make chocolate curls, chocolate panels to surround a cake, tall spikes, baskets, ganache covering and chocolate truffles. I'm acknowledging my inner Las Vegas when I admit that every one of those elements has been piled onto the cake. Wheee!
My favourites were the patterned cake collar (I think it looks like a pressed metal ceiling) and the spikes - which very easy to make with a piece of acetate and a knife.

The basket we made from dipping a blown up water bomb into a vat of melted chocolate was pretty fab too (see below). I'm a pretty impatient, clumsy person, but each element we learnt was designed to look good even if you make a few mistakes or are pretty hopeless in the elegance stakes. There's nothing too fiddly or difficult on that cake, which might be hard to believe. We were assured that something looking like that in a pastry shop would easily sell for about $100.
Any takers? No special events coming up for me, so if anyone wants to buy a special occasion cake.... ;-)

It's a class I highly recommend. Fun, easy and you get to come home with an incredibly decorated cake, a chocolate basket and a few extras like the patterned collar you used and a few sheets of acetate for future spike making extravaganzas. Not bad for $80 - which also includes the cake mix you need to make up to bring along for decoration, and as much chocolate as you'd care to eat (aieee, I'm never touching the stuff again!!!!). Much fun.
Details:
Marg & Maree's Baking and Breadmaking
54 Bell Street
Heidelberg Heights VIC 3081
9455 1611

Europe!

2006-08-09T14:49:00.000+10:00

As Belinda has already noted on her blog, in about 6 weeks we're going to be in Europe. We sing in the same small group and we're going on our second European concert tour - this time to Italy, Switzerland and the UK. Very exciting stuff! Naturally, as devoted foodies, we're keen to get any recommendations from readers of places we should go to eat or delicacies we should try. On our last tour in '04 I made it a point to try a local dish in every country - the plate of raw herring and pickles I had in Odense, Denmark was not as bad as it sounds, but the fatty blood sausage in Cologne was a bit much...
So, here's a list of the places we're visiting. If you have any suggestions for places we MUST got to eat, please let us know!
*Yes, the photo is from our last tour - just before our concert in Linz, Austria.
Italy:
Rome
Chieti (Abruzzo)
Florence, Siena & Barberino val d'Elsa (Chianti region, Tuscany)
Crema & Lodi (near Milan)
Levanto (the Cinque Terre)
Pisa
Switzerland
Locarno
Payerne (near Fribourg)
Lucerne & Engelberg
Solothurn
United Kingdom
London
Cambridge

Post-tour, Belinda is off to Paris and I'm spending 2 weeks travelling around the Czech Republic (7 nights in Prague) and Dresden. Then I'm coming back for 10 days driving through the Cotswolds and Wales with my mum - a total of nearly 2 months away! I don't know if I'll be able to blog much during that time, so there might be a bit of a hiatus on this site! I don't know much about the Cotswolds, so any information would be eagerly appreciated.

Vegetable Rice Curry

2006-08-08T14:09:00.000+10:00

So, still on the healthy theme instead of the cakes. This is not normal! I hope you can cope.
In any case, this is a pretty useful recipe to have up your sleeve for a healthy, filling, tasty, very easy-to-make meal. The baking shop where I did my bread baking class also has cooking several cooking demonstrations each month. They're not hands-on, but they introduce you to new recipes (often baked goods) and you get to taste each one - which I find far more useful than just reading a list of ingredients in a cooking book or looking at a photo. If I saw this recipe in a book I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been interested, but having had the opportunity to taste it I realised it was pretty good, especially with our new watching-our-health outlook.
Although this is called a curry, I think of it as more of a curry flavoured risotto. It's basically a rice dish with flavourings. In fact, this recipe is one our instructor rediscovered from her militant vegetarian health-nut phase in the early 80s, but it holds up well today especially if you use a 'proper' Asian curry paste instead of those dusty tins of curry powder like she used to do.
The fact it uses brown rice may put many off, but I've come around to the 'odd' taste and texture. I definitely had my prejudices about it; I remember a miserable period in my childhood when the whole family were subjected to the Pritikin diet and we ate nothing but brown rice and unsalted, watery vegetables every meal. For an 11 year-old longing for anything fatty, it was a disheartening experience going to the dinner table each night. Brown rice equalled all that was bad in the world!
Sure, it has a chewier texture, and it will never be my rice of choice to go with Asian food or even curries, but it does have its place in the world. I like the nutty flavour and the knowledge that I'm giving myself a healthy dose of fibre! The nuttiness is really brought out by the peanuts and sunflower seeds too: a really interesting flavour! It's also packed full of vegetables so you know you're doing yourself good while you get to eat a tasty meal.
I found it was very easy to make. If you start making it once you get in the door, you can spend the 40 minutes it takes for the rice to cook by doing other exciting things...like reading other food blogs!
Read on for the recipe:

Vegetable Rice Curry
Courtesy of Marg and Maree's Baking and Breadmaking
Serve as a vegetarian main meal, as a vegetable side dish, or if you wish add some cooked chicken or beef strips at step no. 4

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 onions chopped
1-2 tablespoons curry paste
2 cups raw brown rice
3 tablespoons soy grits*
5 cups water
1-2 teaspoons salt
2/3 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup peanuts, chopped and roasted
1 tablespoon olive oil, extra
1-2 zucchini, sliced
2 sticks celery, sliced finely
10 button mushrooms, sliced
4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or 1 can tinned)
Lemon juice, to serve
Packaged crispy fried onions, to serve (optional)

1: Heat the oil in a large saucepan (needs a lid), add the onions, curry paste and rice, saute until the onions are soft. Add the soy grits and cook for a further 2 minutes

2: Add the water to the saucepan, stir in salt, sunflower seeds and peanuts. Bring water ot the boil, cover with lid and cook over a moderate heat until the liquid has been fully absorbed and the rice is tender (approx. 40 minutes).

3: Heat the extra oil in a frypan, add the zucchini, mushrooms and celery, saute until tender, stir in the tomatoes, continue stirring until tomatoes are heated (alternatively, you can add the tinned tomatoes to the rice pot while it's cooking, so they will not be quite so acidic).

4: Add vegetables to rice mixture, stir to thoroughly combine, serve hot with a squeeze of lemon juice and some crispy fried onions over the top.
Makes quite a large amount. Definitely enough for a few meals!

*Note: the soy grits in the recipe are optional and are mainly used by vegetarians to introduce enough protein in their meals. I chose not to include them.
Tagged with vegetarian

New Orleans Gingerbread (low-fat)

2006-08-03T21:12:00.000+10:00

So, keeping with the healthy eating theme from the last post, here's a little sweet something I whipped up for a low-fat sweet treat. Naturally, I took it from the excellent Chocolate and the art of low-fat desserts, by Alice Medrich. I've not had a failure from this book, but the recipes have had varying levels of deliciousness. This one, a spicy gingerbread, was at the lower end. I'm not sure what I was expecting but this wasn't quite it. And I wonder if the simple addition of a little more butter and egg yolks might have transformed it into something marvellous. I wonder if this is a recipe that doesn't quite work as low-fat?
I'm being picky, of course, this is still a very tasty cake and I was interested to see that the texture improved after a few days. Straight out of the oven I found it a bit dry, but after giving away half because I wasn't so impressed, I noticed a few days later that it had become more moist.

The recipe included fresh ginger, mustard powder, treacle and coffee powder, so I was expecting a pretty big flavour hit, a bit like Nigella's excellent chocolate gingerbread, but it didn't happen. It was as if the lack of fat in the recipe muted those gutsy flavours. Just speculation - I may be very wrong, and in any case, adding more fat to bring out the flavours really defeats the purpose of making this cake!

Medrich says this cake "is so lean that you might consider a dollop of low-fat sour cream or Enlightened Creme Fraiche [or low-fat vanilla yoghurt] and maybe some sliced bananas to accompany it." I agree with her; it needed some accompaniment. But instead of adding fat later, if it's so lean why not add a bit more to start with and it might not need any accompaniment? Maybe a case of taking the project a step too far? I'd be interested to know if anyone else has made this and what they thought. Maybe my expectations were too high, after the other success stories I've had with this book.

Read on for the recipe:

Spicy New Orleans Gingerbread

from Chocolate & the art of Low-Fat Desserts, Alice Medrich

1 cup plain flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard

1/8 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon instant coffee powder

1/2 cup brown sugar

6 tablespoons treacle

1 egg

1 egg white

2 1/2 tablespoons melted butter

2 1/2 tablspoons grated fresh ginger

2 tablespoons baby-food prunes or applesauce

1/4 cup boiling water

1: Preheat oven to 325F (165 C)

2: Whisk together the flour, cloves, cinnamon, mustard and salt. Set aside. In a small cup mix together baking soda and coffee powder. Set aside.

3: Add sugar to a third bowl. Add the treacle, whole egg, egg white, butter, ginger and prunes. Whisk together until combined. Stir in the flour mixture. Dissolve bicarb and coffee powder in boiling water. Stir into batter until just combined.

4: Pour batter into a round or bundt pan. Bake about 25-30 minutes for a round pan, 30-35 minutes for a ring mould - until centre is dry. Cool cake for 10 minutes before turning out.

Cake may be stored at room temperature for 3-4 days, well wrapped, or frozen up to 2 months.

Tagged with baking

Beef Braised in Beer (low fat!)

2006-07-31T14:56:00.000+10:00

It may not be obvious from this blog, but I'm actually on a bit of a healthy-eating plan at the moment. Yes, a blog full of baking recipes may have deluded you somewhat, but it's true. I'm trying to get fit and healthy, especially in preparation for a rapidly-approaching trip to Europe. I mean, I can't look like a sad, fat-wobbly tourist walking around fashionista Italy, can I?! Banish the thought!
Of course, making a decision to go healthier in the middle of what seems to be an never-ending Melbourne winter is pretty bloody poor timing. Everything is crying out for thick fat-heavy stews and chunky soups and all things buttery and good. Although, I have to admit in a delusion of self-congratulation at the healthy fish dinner I ate at Claypots last night, I succumbed to an incredible Polish plum jam donut from Europa Cake Shop in Acland Street last night. Good work, Niki. I think I've seen a short doco about the making of those donuts; they take 10 hours to make. But even cold and at midnight they tasted magnificent. (NB just found a short doco about these donuts. They are, indeed, 'famous'.)

But, anyway, back to the healthy food. I was looking through the low-fat section of Nigella Lawson's How to Eat and was surprised to see a recipe for 'Beef Braised in Beer'. Surely that's not low-fat! How could it be? But it sounded like perfect winter food, so not believing my luck, I gave it a go. Nigella says it is pretty much an English version of a carbonnade - a northern French stew of meat cooked with dark beer and prunes. Now, I'm definitely not a fan of sweet flavours in my savoury foods, or fruit mixed with meat, but I was game, especially as the idea behind this was that the richness and depth of the prunes would replace any extra fat in the dish. Soaked prunes have a similar texture to fat, and are often substituted for their equal weight of butter in low-fat baking recipes. Also, because the dish is cooked very slowly, you can use lean meat, and it will still be quite tender.
It would have been obvious to choose Guinness for my stout, but instead I got Cooper's Extra Stout. Support your local businesses!
It was easy to make and definitely very full flavoured. I acutally liked the taste of the prunes - they gave a tang that was good with the dark flavours of the sauce. However, I could only take it in small doses. The sweetness got to me after a while.
It definitely didn't taste low-fat, and was perfect for a cold winter's night. My mum came home to the smell of warm stew and told me it reminded her exactly of the old-fashioned beef braises her mother used to make in the 50s & 60s. So, I guess that's a commendation! I think she liked it more than I did.
Keeping with the whole healthy-eating-plan thing, I served this on top of wholemeal pasta. I'm slowly coming around to the taste of the wholemeal stuff, but it's never going to be a good as 'real' pasta!!
I think, as so many of you already have How To Eat that I'm not going to include the recipe this time. If you don't have it, go out and pick up a copy! It really is a very useful book.
Braise after coming out of oven

Spiced Apple Cake

2006-07-27T13:31:00.000+10:00

Inherently I'm a very lazy person. So when I see a recipe for an apple cake in which I don't have to peel the apples, I'm sold. When that cake turns out to be completely delicious, I'm vidicated.
Peeling - pah!
Being left-handed has alwyas made peeling vegetables a real trial for me, but finding this 'chuck 'em all in' recipe in a Jill Dupleix book shouldn't surprise anyone. Jill is the queen of easy, hands-off cookery. Her best-known books are called Simple Food, Very Simple Food and her new one...ummm Really Very Simple Food, or something like that. Very Jill. I've written about her on many occasions before; an expat Aussie, she is now Cookery Writer at the Times in London. I recently saw her on an episode of Good Food Live doing her very blunt and laconic Aussie thing -in this case roundly telling off host Jennie Barnett for asking "a very ignorant question" when she was asked if we celebrated Easter at the same time as the rest of the world in Australia. I mean, really! I don't often bristle at shades of cultural imperialism from the UK, but I fully supported Jill's bemusement at that one!

So, I found this recipe in New Food, which I picked up 2nd hand at the uni market. I wrote about this book when I posted about fresh apple muesli. In the few months I've had it, I've made this cake about 4 times. Occasionally I've looked at the other cake recipes, but none grab me as much as this. I love the taste combination of apples with warm, wintery spices and this chunky, fruity, spicy cake is perfect for the cooler months. I tend to jack up the spices in any recipe, so feel free to add more than what is indicated! I've found it even handles the substition of wholemeal for plain flour very well, as do many heavier, rustic cakes - so with that and the apple peel, at least you know you're getting your fibre!

Each time I've made this cake it's turned out a little differently - both in taste and texture. I can't really explain it. Well, apart from one instance where (and this is absolute testimony to my laziness) I didn't have any eggs and couldn't be bothered going out to get any, so decided to just press on. Instead of eggs I decided to chop up a handful of dates and use them instead. "Yeah, that'll stick it all together. It'll be fine!" I somehow convinced myself. Evidentally I totally forgot that umm...dates are really sweet! I had soaked them in brandy before hand so yes, they acted in sticking the cake together, but only if you were looking for nougat!! The thing solidified like a brick. A cake it was not. But really tasty it was! It was kind of like a sweetmeat. Chunks of sugary, spicy preserved fruit stuff that was very easy to snack on. Sort of a cross between nougat and panforte. It was sweet enough to send my head into a spin, but wow- I loved it. Nearly ate the entire thing on my own. I like to think my laziness was vindicated again.Ahem.
And I have to tell you, the smell when baking this is divine.
Read on for the recipe:

Tagged with cake
Spiced Apple Cake
New Food - Jill Dupleix

Jill writes: "This is a big, chunky, fruity, spicy cake for a special morning or afternoon tea. I advise you to skip lunch."

1 cup raisins
1/2 cup rum or brandy
1 cup self-raising flour (wholemeal self-raising works well)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
Pinch of salt
140 grams (5 ounces) butter
1 1/2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
2 cups chopped, unpeeled apples
1 cup chopped walnuts

-Preheat oven to 180C (350F)
-Soak raisings in rum or brandy
-Sift flours, baking powder, spices and salt.
-Beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy
-Add eggs one at a a time, beating after each addition
-Gradually fold in flour mixture
-Add apples, nuts and drained raisins. If mixture is very thick, add some of the rum or brandy.
-Pour into a 25cm (10 inch) pan and bake for 1.5 hours until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
-Cool and serve.

Fennel and orange soup

2006-07-21T17:20:00.000+10:00

This is one of Clotilde's recipes from about 2.5 years ago. I remember reading it and being really inspired to make it, but fennel is a winter vegetable, and it was mid-summer in Australia. It took a few months before I could do it, and I loved the result. I'm not a big fan of licorice, but I do like aniseedy vegetables like fennel and chicory. With the tang and sweetness of candied orange peel and marmalade added to it in the soup (yes, weird!), the taste combination is really unusual and bold. I think it's a great combination.

The soup is on the sweet side - another con in my experience - but again, it works. Many people can't abide the though of candied orange, but it's not so overpowering in this; all the flavours meld together. Yes, it is orangey, so if it's the strong orange flavour of the candied peel (and marmalade) that doesn't appeal, then you may not like this soup.
This is probably one of the most 'cheffy' tasting soups I've made - there's no hearty, rustic flavours and chunky textures like the usual things that come off my stove, but it's quick to make and tastes really interesting. From start to finish you can be eating this soup in 30 minutes...as I am right now. I think it would be a great starter for a dinner party; you could follow it with something quite heavy, but even fish would complement it well.

It's also good to eat if you stupidly burnt the roof of your mouth when tasting something you were cooking a few days ago and now cannot bear the pain to chew anything more solid than pureed soup. Not that I've been so stupid to do such a thing. Oh no....not me!
Read on for the recipe:

Tagged with soup
Soupe de Fenouil aux Ecorces d'Orange
Fennel and orange soup
From Chocolate & Zucchini

- three bulbs of fennel*
- two onions
- about 15 strips of candied orange peel (or chopped mixed peel)
- 2 tbsp orange marmalade
- 3 cups vegetable stock
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds
- 1 tbsp brown sugar or molasses (optional)
- olive oil
- salt, pepper

(Serves 4.)

Peel and chop the onions. Heat up some olive oil in a large saucepan and cook the onions on medium heat for a few minutes. Wash the fennel bulbs, cut off the stalks (reserve the little sprigs), remove the hearts and chop. Dice the orange peel.

When the onions are softened and slightly translucent, add the fennel, orange peel, coriander seeds, salt and pepper, and the stock. Cover, bring to a simmer and let cook for twenty to twenty-five minutes, until the fennel is thoroughly cooked.

Transfer all or part of the solids into a food processor, puree and return to the saucepan. Stir over low heat, adding the orange marmelade and brown sugar (if needed). Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve in bowls, topped with a candied orange strip and a little sprig fennel if you feel all fancy and garnish-ish.

You can also soft-boil an egg, peel it and break it open in the bowl of soup, for a lovely blend of tastes and a complete meal
*I've made it using 1 bulb, and it's still good

Bastille Day patisserie!

2006-07-14T15:30:00.000+10:00

I actually made this ages ago; Easter, in fact. Hence the yellow painted egg down the bottom. But due to forgetfullness and other posts taking priority, this has languished in my photo pile for too long, especially considering how proud I was of it! But what better than Bastille Day to pull out something so obviously French-derived, eh??

I think it was because I had 1/2 a jar of leftover cherries in the fridge (remember those chocolate cherry brownies?), and I was looking for something to make to take to a family lunch. I flicked around a few books and, as often, turned back to my trusty Stepanie Alexander Cook's Companion. It had all the right moves: preserved cherries, ground almonds and few other ingredients. I particularly liked the idea of making up an eggy, buttery, sugary almond paste (a frangipane) to spread over the base of the tart; both for flavour and to prevent the base from getting soggy from the fruit. Another layer gets spread over the top so the fruit is sandwiched between - yum! I've always been a fan of almond croissants, so anything made with frangipane is a big winner in my eyes.

This cherry tart is a simplified version of one from Jane Grigson's Fruit Book - and I simplified it even more by using frozen shortcrust pastry. I didn't have quite enough cherries, so I made up the difference with the only vaguely appropriate thing we had in the pantry (because I'm too lazy to run off to the supermarket after already starting to make something. Improvisation is my saviour!...and my downfall!) which was a tin of prunes. Now don't screw up your nose! Tinned prunes are very nice; and they have a sprightly tartness to their flavour which the dried ones don't. I thought they paired pretty well with the cherries.
I also jacked up the almond flavour with a tiny splash of almond essence. But don't use too much because that stuff is way powerful and can overshadow any other flavour. It makes things taste so damn European, though. As my mum would say, it needs to be added from the top of a tall building!

Yes, this tart tasted really, really good. Quite professional, like something bought in a French bakery, but didn't use too many infredients or require any fussy technique. However, my real pride and joy is that lattice-work. People, check out my lattice-work! Is that good or what?? It looks like something in a book! I was so chuffed I kept shoving the tart in the faces of friends and passing strangers. Next time I'll take the time to make my own pastry (although the frozen stuff was adequte) and I might even get jiggy with the lattice-work. My nan suggested twisting the strips.....oooooh, kinky!

Read on for the recipe:

Cherry, Prune and Almond Tart
Adapted from Jane Grigson, by way of Stephanie Alexander.

2 sheets frozen shortcrust pastry
90g butter
90g caster sugar
1 egg
1 extra egg yolk
3 tablespoons plain flour
125g ground almonds
1/4 (or 1/2) teaspoon almond essence
1/2 cup jarred Morello cherries, drained but syrup reserved
1/2 cup tinned prunes, chopped
100g icing sugar

-Preheat oven to 200C.
-Line a 20cm loose-bottomed flan tin with the 1 sheet of the pastry and bake blind for 20 minute. Reserve the other sheet for making the lattice top.
-Reduce oven temperature to 180C.
-Cream butter and caster sugar until pale. Add egg, extra egg yolk, flour and ground almonds to make a paste.
-Spread a thin later of paste over the base of the pastry case. Scatter cherries and prunes over evenly.
-Dab on remaining paste and smooth as well as you can with a knife.
-Cut the other pastry sheet into long strips and cover the tart with a lattice.. Get jiggy and creative if you feel so inspired.
-Bake for 25 minutes until tart feels springy and firm.
-Cool a few minutes, then brush all over with icing sugar mixed with a little of the reserved syrup. Return to oven for another 5 minutes.
-Serve warm or cold.

Tagged with baking

Filipino suggestions?

2006-07-11T16:17:00.000+10:00

My uncle was recently on holiday in the Philippines, and knowing my fondness for unusual foods, brought this back for me: a can of "Fish n' Nuts" . Seeing it on the shelf makes me giggle.
Any ideas? Anyone?

And these also. I think I have a fair idea of what to do with the shrimp fry, but the cooked dry peas...??

More low fat chocolatey delights

2006-07-07T12:40:00.000+10:00

This is another recipe inspired by Alic Medrich. The chocolate walnut torte in Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts has been the next recipe on my list for a while, and when I had a function to attend I thought I'd try this cake, but in a slice tin and cut into individual portion-controlled bite size squares. Always good when you know people are watching their fat/sugar/carb/food intake, but still appreciate something sweet.

I had a feeling the recipe would be quite similar to the fallen chocolate souffle torte I made a few months ago, and in this I was correct. It has the same decadent, rich, flourless consistency that belies the fact that it is low in fat; things this good must be bad for you! They even look like something you should avoid.... In fact, the last few times I've made low-fat chocolate goodies from this book, I've had to make a sign to tape to the platter proclaiming they are low fat, so people won't avoid trying them.

However, I have to acknowledge that this isn't the best recipe in which to play around with pans sizes and individual portions. It's very difficult to cut and there was quite a lot of wastage (ahem...). The centre is gooey and the tops have that crackly crust that just shatters everywhere. To get them into small, bite-size portions was hard work. I probably wouldn't do it again using this recipe. It's definitely better suited to being served in larger portions, on a plate, with cutlery. It'd be the perfect light dessert after a good dinner.

Unbelievably, the supermarket didn't have any plain dark chocolate when I was shopping for ingredients. I didn't really want to go the cheap cooking chocolate route, so I bought a small bar of rum & raisin dark chocolate. The recipe only needs 75 grams and called for a tablespoon of rum, so I thought it would work well. And it did, if you like that flavour of commercial rum & raisin chocolate. I forgot that I didn't, and was surprised at how strongly the flavour carried through the cake. I'm sure some people love that taste, but next time I'm not settling for second-best...
Read on for the recipe:

Chocolate walnut torte pieces with rum & raisin flavour.
Based on Alice Medrich 'Chocolate Walnut Torte'

1/3 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
3 tablespoons plain flour
2 1/2 ounces (75g) rum & raisin chocolate, chopped fine (or plain dark chocolate)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup boiling water
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon rum
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg whites
Icing sugar, to dust.

1: Preheat oven to 350 (175C) and prepare a slice tin (or an 8 inch round cake tin) with baking paper and vegetable oil spray.

2: Grind walnuts with the flour in a food processor or blender until very fine. Set aside.

3: Combine chopped chocolate, cocoa & 3/4 cup sugar in a large bowl. Pour in boiling water and whisk until mixture is smooth and fully combined. Stir in egg yolk, rum and vanilla. Set aside.

4: Beat egg whites in a medium bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually sprinkle in the remaining sugar and continue to beag at high speed until stiff. Fold 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate batter to lighten, then fold in the remaining egg whites.

5: Scrape batter into the pan and smooth the top. Bake until a skewer or toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. My slice tin took about 20-25 minutes. Cool in the tin.

6: Allow to cool completely (letting it sit in the fridge helps) before removing and cutting into squares. Dust with icing sugar.
Tagged with chocolate

Rude Food

2006-07-03T23:10:00.000+10:00

Hehehe. Rude Food. Lots of undergraduate fun.
Fart bar! Big Nuts! Jussi Pussi! Happy Crak! Homo Milk! Fanny tuna!....

His Mother's Oatmeal Cookies

2006-06-30T13:25:00.000+10:00

Still with the oats theme. Who can guess who's got a big old bag of horse chaff in their pantry??
I ordered a girly cookbook, "Culinarytherapy - The Girl's Guide to Food for Every Mood", for a friend and was leafing through it this week. I felt like I hadn't baked anything for ages (patently untrue, but I'm happy to listen to my feelings) so this recipe for oatmeal cookies appealed. I had all the ingredients so I didn't have to step outside the house which, in the current Melbourne winter weather, is a Very Good Thing.

This oatmeal cookie recipe is found in the chapter called "When you're feeding the flame" or Dating Dishes. The story behind the name of these cookies goes thus:
"There's just something about an oatmeal cookie that says 'there, there now, honey, come and sit on my lap and tell Mommy where it hurts'. So go ahead, make a batch of these cookies, and then kiss it and make it all better."

Yeah, ok. Anyway, this mixture is easy to make up, but seemed a bit sloppy. I added more oats just in case. I dolloped blobs of the mixture onto the ungreased baking sheets it specified. And here's the rub: Beware of any recipe that involves ungreased baking sheets. No good can come of it. If you imagined that sentence spoken in a Muppets "Monsterpiece Theatre" voice with thunder in the background followed by wild cackling laughter, then you've got the idea. Every single cookie stuck hard and fast to the sheets and I had to attack them with knives and spatulas. There were many casualties in the fight. I'd like to say I disposed of them, but truth is that many broken bits ended up in my mouth.
So, yes, cookies that had crunchy edges and insides that were so soft they wanted to fall through the bars of the cooling rack. I think the cooking time was way off. In retrospect, 10-12 minutes wasn't enough, and I ended up with raw cookies. I've just come back from putting them back in the oven for another 10 minutes to crisp them up. They didn't have the heft I imagined; they're more of the light and delicate biscuit school. They have a good flavour, but they're very sweet - a bit too much for my taste. That was even with reducing the amounts of brown sugar, white sugar and maple syrup it requested. But with a few tweaks this could be a good recipe. Not sure I'd repeat it though - there are many thousands of oatmeal cookie recipes out there I can try next time.
Read on for the recipe:

Oatmeal Cookies
adapted from 'Culinarytherapy - A Girl's Guide to Food for Every Mood.'

3/4 cup margarine/butter
3/4 firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 granulated sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda (bicarb)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup raisins, nuts and/or chocolate chips.

-Cream the butter, sugars and syrup in a large bowl. Add the egg, 1/4 cup water and vanilla and beat well.
-Add oats, flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon and stir to combine.
-Stir in the raisins, nuts or chocolate chips.
-Drop the dough by teaspoons onto GREASED baking sheets and bake at 350 (175) for 15-20 minutes. Let cool on wire rack.

Tagged with cookies

Fresh apple muesli

2006-06-27T10:19:00.000+10:00

One of my worst bad habits is not eating breakfast. I know I should and I have sincere plans to do it, but every morning I can barely make it out of the house with both shoes on. Sitting down to a good breakfast almost nevery happens; I'll always go for the extra 10 minutes in bed!
When I do grab a few minutes to eat breakfast I'm a bit stuck for ideas. I don't like cereal or sweet foods in the morning- jams, honey, yoghurts....nope, I can't cope with that sugar injection first thing in the day. A muesli bar in the car on the way to work? Aieeee- my teeth hurt at the thought. And it's not enough to fill me up. I usually go for some grainy toast with Vegemite, but even that leaves me unsatisfied. Actually taking the time to eat something seems to actually makes me hungrier, and then I'm scrounging around for something not long after getting to work. Strangely, not eating breakfast doesn't leave me as hungry, but I know I really ought to. No, the situation is unsatisfactory, dammit!
One of the alternatives suggested to me by many books and doctors is a cooked breakfast. Eggs, and tomatoes and spinach and mushrooms and stuff. Hello?? Like, SURE that's going to happen! I'm not standing over a frying pan straight out of bed, when I could be using that time in bed/in the shower/doing my hair/getting to work early! And then coming home to the dirty pans? Tasty idea, but realistically, not going to happen.

Fresh muesli is something I had been unfamiliar with until recently. To me, muesli was just another dry boxed cereal and I didn't like them. It looked like horse feed. But one day in a cafe a friend ordered some fresh museli and it arrived looking all moist and fruity and yoghurty and damn attractive. I kept sneaking bits from his plate. It was explained to me that it was Swiss bircher muesli; from then I was interested. This was something I could eat, but I couldn't go out for breakfast every morning, could I? I never considered making my own. I'd dabbled in making my own granola last year. It was tasty, but really took organisation and time to make, and really isn't as healthy because it uses sugars, syrups and oil.

But a few months ago, at a 2nd hand book stall I found Jill Dupleix's 'New Food'. Her first book (?) published in 1993, it was quite forward thinking and its recipes hold up really well today. Design-wise it's amusing; it's at the real cross-roads between the minimalist design style of the 90s and the overblown, blowsy, gilt-rimmed crockery and overcrowded country-house table photographs of the 80s. I laugh every time I see a photo of some khaki-coloured grapes piled onto a tizzy silver platter. Eugh.
In the breakfast section, Jill includes the fresh muesli recipe of a Swiss friend. It looked dead easy to make and I gave it a go. It was so good that now I make it every other week. It does require a tiny amount of organisation, because you have to soak the oats overnight, but I can just about cope with that. And would you believe it's the only thing I've ever found that actually fills me up in the morning and leaves me feeling full until lunchtime.? Yay! All those slow-release, low GI oats that expand in my stomach I guess. It's not too sweet, so it doesn't offend my tastebuds. I use Jalna fat-free yoghurt, so it's even healthier, and I add a few spoons of cinnamon (hence the pretty unappealing brown colour of the mush in the photo) to go with the apple. The honey instead of refined sugar makes it better for you too.
It's tasty, it's healthy and it's filling. Woo-hoo!

Read on for the recipe:

Fresh apple muesli
from Jill Dupleix 'New Food'

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup water
1/2 cup natural yoghurt
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon wheatgerm
2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 banana, mashed
1 greem apple, coarsely grated (with skin)
Any fruits or berries you like
*Cinnamon to taste (optional)

-Soak rolled oats overnight in water
-Add yoghurt, honey, wheatgerm, nuts, banana, apple and fruits
-Top with more grated apple and serve
Serves 4

NB - Even though you have to be a millionaire to buy bananas these days, don't be tempted to skip this ingredient. I tried it and it really wasn't very good. So, dig deep and buy that one $2 banana.
Tagged with breakfast

Vinegar at The Point??

2006-06-21T16:29:00.000+10:00

OK, how poor is this? Sunday afternoon downstairs in the cafe at The Point restaurant by Albert Park Lake. The place is very quiet; very few customers. Despite the cold, grey day, the open fire isn't lit. Strange. My mum and I go up to the counter to place and pay for our orders; she orders a glass of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. We get back to our tables, and huddle into our overcoats, chatting away. Our wines arrive and my uncle casts a suspicious look at her class:
"What's that?" he enquires
"A Sav Blanc"
"Why is it all cloudy?"
"Hmmm...I think it's the condensation on the glass. It's pretty cold"
"Let me taste" he says, reaching for the glass.
He takes a sniff and then a sip, and his mouth puckers up and his eyes pop out.
"No good?"
"NO!!!! Niki, have a taste!"
Oh great. I get to taste the corked wine, I think. So I take a sniff and whoa, hello vinegar smell! How weird, I think - this wine's really off. So, I take a mouthful as well. And %&@*()#!!!! The liquid IS vinegar!! My mother has been given a glass of refrigerated white wine vinegar.
A bit rashly, she takes the glass for a taste and takes a big mouthful that takes her breath away. We burst out laughing, more in bemusement than anything else.
She takes the glass up to the counter and tells them:
"It seems I've been given a glass of vinegar instead of white wine"
Naturally they look at her as if she has two heads. I might do the same thing in their situation. Maybe they think she's just a difficult customer.
"No, I mean it. It's not wine that's gone vinegary, it actually is a glass of vinegar. Taste it if you don't believe me!"
She was informed that they're not allowed to taste food or wine that is returned with a problem (!) so they declined her offer. But they did pour themselves a glass from the bottle in the fridge and we hear them laughing. Our waiter came to the table with a new glass to confirm that she was not wrong. He set down her new glass of wine and said (direct quote):
"So, ummmmm, yeah. Hope you enjoy that one"

Hmmmm. No apology. No offer of a free glass of wine. Distinct indifference shown by the staff. No supervisor or manager coming up to offer explanations or condolences. In fact, nothing to render this experience anything but extremely poor. It's not like this is some random suburban cafe; this is a highly-regarded establishment. AND they only had 1 other table of customers! Since then, I've been wondering how they managed to actually confuse a bottle of Marlborough Sav Blanc with a bottle of vinegar. If they're storing their vinegar in wine bottles, then why on earth is it not labelled, or at least had the old label scribbled over?? Very, very strange behaviour.

Sadly the experience didn't impove much after that. The food my uncle and I had was quite good, but sadly mum was in for a run of bad luck, with a plate of crumbed fish that was definitely past its prime; a very prominent bitter taste it had. Unpleasant. I mentioned it as our plates were cleared. The perfect apology would have been to offer her the coffee she ordered later free of charge. (incidentally, $3.50 for a coffee??! Sheesh!) Something was definitely amiss that day. Maybe it was a bad day? Maybe someone died? Perhaps. But an experience like the glass of vinegar could be laughed off if a sincere apology was offered, rather than the apathy we experienced. Nowdays you run the risk of some innocent-looking person, just like me, writing of the experience on a personal website, and you just never know how many people will read it and remember it. It's difficult to get away with poor service these days!

Overall, it was an underwhelming experience. In the words of this week's John Lethlean review in The Age Epicure: "Not worth crossing town for". I don't think we'll be returning, which is a real shame, as we've had some very fine meals in the restaurant upstairs over the years. It's not like we're starved for other good restaurant choices in Melbourne....

Vehemently NOT low fat! Nutella cake

2006-06-18T13:08:00.000+10:00

Hehehehe. *Very evil laugh*. From the sublime to the ridiculous. From one extreme to the other. From exuberantly low-fat chocolate fudge cookies to this! I walked into rehearsal with this birthday cake for Belinda, and my friends, who had been lulled into low-fat security by those cookies I've been bringing along recently looked at me with trusting, bright eyes and asked "So, this is low fat too, right?"
HAHAHAHAHA I don't think so, kiddies. This is one mamma of a luxury cake and in no way could be considered low cal. Sorry! It's a flourless chocolate cake containing 6 eggs, a chunk of butter, a block of chocolate, half a bottle of cream, alcohol, and a whole jar of Nutella. Yes, AN ENTIRE JAR OF NUTELLA!! *Swoon*. On the up-side, it doesn't contain any (extra) sugar! AND it's wheat & gluten free. Hehe. This is pure decadent indulgence, and bloody great it is too.

It was probably a bit much for 11.30am eating, to be honest, but I've never seen a cake disappear so fast; even those who hold back from rehearsal break treats (gotta lose weight before we tour Italy!) got stuck into this one. It's a damp, moist, gooey, luxurious delight (the cake, not sex...)
It was a bit of a spontaneous effort, this. See, I'd been out with the choir girls at a fashion fundraising event, and at the end of the night, talk came up about Belinda's birthday the next day. Knowing she's another foodie with her own foodblog I asked what cake she'd made for rehearsal the next morning. (birthday rules, you know. You gotta bring a cake!) However, Belinda is one of the hardest-working people I know and simply hadn't had time to make one, so in my champagne-fuelled benevolence I announced I'd make one for her.
"Mmm, a Niki cake?" she said. Yes people, flattery will get you everywhere!
It was 10.30pm by this stage. We then went out for drinks. Ahem. I got home at ummm....midnight, and then got started. So, if you are looking at my half-peeled hazelnuts and thinking "hey, she didn't get rid of all the skins!", then bugger off! It was 2.00am by that stage and I was so over rubbing nuts with a tea towel. :-) The extra 2 glasses of red wine I had forced upon me while making it might have had an effect too, perhaps? But, I think for a middle-of-the-night, half-drunk decoration effort, it's not so bad. Maybe not one of my greatest decorating triumphs. (but the balding clown candle is a highlight, n'est ce pas?).

Now, most people know this cake from its inclusion in Nigella's Domestic Goddess, but I distinctly remember making it before that book was published, having found the recipe on the internet when searching for a chocolate cake to make for a girly weekend, so I'm quite certain she got the recipe from somewhere else. Therefore I can't feel guilty for including her recipe here.

Added bonus of making this cake: It's pretty damn hard to get every smidge of Nutella out of the jar into the bowl. That stuff is way sticky, so, you know, when you can't get those last bits out it's the absolute perfect excuse to get stuck in with your fingers. Mmm....the cake probably doesn't need that last bit, does it? I'll just have to eat it.Can't let it go to waste! Mmmmm. Nutella fingers...... :-P

Read on for the recipe:

Nutella Cake
Serves 8 (or more like 20!)

for the cake
6 large eggs -- separated
1 pinch salt
125 g soft unsalted butter
1 jar of Nutella (400 g) (Yes, an entire jar.)
1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water
100 g finely ground hazelnuts *
120 g dark chocolate, melted

for the icing
100 hazelnuts
125 ml double cream
1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water
125 g dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. (350 F).

Grease a 9-inch (23 cm) springform pan. Line it with parchment or wax paper if you feel safer doing that. I didn't and it was fine.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs whites and salt until stiff but not dry. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and Nutella together, then add Frangelico (or whatever you're using), egg yolks, and ground hazelnuts. Fold in the cooled, melted chocolate, then lighten the mixture with a dollop of egg white, which you can beat in as roughly as you want, before gently folding the rest of them in a third at a time. Pour into the prepared pan and cook for 40 minutes or until the cake's beginning to come away at the sides, then let cool on rack.

Toast the hazelnuts in a dry frying pan until the aroma wafts upward and the nuts are golden brown in parts: keep shaking the pan so they don't burn on one side and stay too pallid on others. If you use unpeeled nuts, transfer them to a kitchen towel, and rub, rub, rub. Most of the skins should come off. Transfer to a plate and let cool. Leave them whole or chop them up, depending on how much skin you actually managed to get off.

In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, add the cream, liquer or water, and chopped chocolate and heat gently. Once the chocolate's melted, take the pan off the heat and cool in the refrigerater for a few minutes, then whisk until it reaches the right consistency to ice just the top of the cake. Unmold the cooled cake carefully. Ice the top with the chocolate icing, and decorate with the hazelnuts.

*You could use ground almonds instead if you can't find ground hazelnuts. I've done it this way before and it's fine, but a little more densely textured.
Tagged with Baking

Low fat! Cocoa fudge cookies

2006-06-08T14:58:00.000+10:00

Yes, another low-fat winner from the talents of Alice Medrich. I saw this recipe a few weeks ago on Baking Sheet and bookmarked it to try. A low-fat cookie that tastes like a brownie? Hell, yeah! It's worth having a low-fat biscuit recipe up your sleeve anyway, and seeing it was one of Alice Medrich's indicated that it'd be guaranteed not to taste low-fat. Her things rarely do; I'm a big fan, as evidenced by my postings about her fallen souffle cake, chocolate layer cake, souffles and lemon yoghurt cake.
I actually made these about a month ago for mother's day. The present I ordered for mum from Amazon hadn't arrived so I came home late from a concert on the Saturday, whipped up the mixture, stuck it in the fridge and baked them up the next morning to take up to her for breakfast with a cup of tea. I know, warm chocolate biscuits for breakfast is bit over-the-top, but what more decadent way to spend the morning in bed?
I had plans to photograph them for the blog but they all disappeared!! She took some to work, where the girls reckoned they were the best chocolate biscuits they'd ever tasted, couldn't believe they were low-fat, and demanded the recipe. So, in the interests of other people who may be interested, and so I could actually post about them, I whipped up another batch.
Now, Nic notes that this recipe was published in Cooking Light magazine, so from that I'm assuming that it is a low-fat recipe. I've never seen a Cooking Light magazine, but from what I've heard it's about cooking......umm....light, yeah? They have a fantastic texture: a crispy shell encasing soft, almost gooey insides. They're light, and not greasy. Luxurious taste without the luxurious calorie count.
Read on for the recipe:

Cocoa Fudge Cookies
(from Cooking Light, recipe by Alice Medrich)
1 cup plain flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
7 tbsp cocoa powder (unsweetened)
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup dried tart cherries or cranberries (or mini chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 350F (175C).
Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.
In a large, microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter in the microwave. Stir in cocoa powder and sugars. Stir in yogurt and vanilla extract. Add flour and mix until just combined. Stir in cherries or mini-chocolate chips, if using.
Drop tablespoonfuls of batter onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Press down slightly to flatten; cookies do not spread a lot.
Bake at 350F/175C for 9-12 minutes or until set and slightly firm at the edges. Allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 2 dozen.

Note: *Adding mini choc chips and topping with nuts probably ups the fat content a bit, so leave them out if you're concerned about that.

*Refrigerating the mixture overnight made biscuits with a less "perfect" texture and shape. Using the mix immediately seem to produce a better looking and better textured biscuit.

Tagged with low fat

Recuperation soup

2006-06-01T13:50:00.000+10:00

Apologies for a lack of posts. I've been preparing for, and currently recovering from, a stint in hospital. This is the first time in a few days I've made it down the stairs to check emails etc. and I think that's been quite enough activity for the day. Time for another nap!

But before that, here's my latest passion. I think I'm seriously in love with this soup. It's become a bit of an obsession. In the space of 2 weeks I made two batches and took it to work for lunch EVERY DAY, as well as having it for dinner some nights. I think it was a comment I made about chickpeas a few weeks ago, and a suggestion to try some chickpea recipes in Nigella's How To Eat that led me to the discovery of Anna del Conte's recipe for chickpea and pasta soup that Nigella included. But, in commendable lazy-Niki style I disregarded virtually all instructions on how to make it and just went my own way, so I can hardly claim it as Anna del Conte's recipe. However, if my short-cut version is so magnificent I can hardly imagine how good the "real" recipe would taste.

The "real" recipe instructs me to soak chickpeas overnight in a bicarbonate of soda paste, and then to boil them up for a few hours. Hmmm, yeah.....I wanted soup now, not tomorrow, so I used a few tins instead. The "real" recipe instructed me to contain the sprigs of rosemary and garlic inside a trouser sock (ewwww...a new one, I would hope), so you could fish them out afterwards so the rosemary needles wouldn't swim around the soup and turn bitter, but I seriously couldn't be bothered wasting a trouser sock and anyway, I only own black ones, and was not keen to replicate at Bridget Jones-like escapade in the kitchen. So I just chucked in whole garlic cloves and branches of rosemary. I actually quite like the taste of individual rosemary needles swimming around my soup, and sweetly softened garlic cloves are always a good thing.
I can't even remember now what other alterations I made, but I think this soup is a good example of taking a flavour idea and running with it. I managed to restrain myself from adding too many ingredients, as I can often do when faced with a short list of flavours. I always think the flavour won't be strong or punchy enough if there's not many ingredients. This was a problem my father had as well, so evidently it must be genetic.

However, this time I kept to what Nigella/Anna suggested and I was amazed. Who would have thought that a simple soup of stock, chickpeas, garlic, rosemary and tinned tomatoes could be so incredibly mind-blowing? It really is. It's full of flavour, the rosemary gives a great, unusual edge to the flavour and the chickpeas make it filling. However, my favourite part was the fact the noodles, after their lengthy stewing in the liquid turned slippery and silky and perfectly slurpy. Despite my Italian blood, I've never been one for al dente pasta. My Northern Italian grandparents are the same; we all prefer our pasta softer, so this soup catered perfectly to my needs! And sitting here, in my dressing gown, feeling woozy and ready for another nap, it's the type of thing I wish I had waiting for me on the stove.
Read on for the recipe:

Chickpea & pasta soup
Loosely based on Anna del Conte's recipe, found in Nigella's 'How To Eat'

2 tins of chickpeas (or 1 tin plus 1 tin of cannellini beans)
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
8 cloves of garlic, peeled and bruised
400g tinned tomatoes
120 ml olive oil
3 litres of stock (vegetable, chicken, white wine & water or a mix of any of them)
270g small tubular pasta, such as spirals or ditalini
parmesan for grating over
chilli oil and flatleaf parsley, if you like

Empty the chickpeas/beans into a large pot with their liquid. Add 1/2 the olive oil, the garlic cloves and rosemary and cook for a few minutes. Add the tinned tomatoes and the stock/liquid/wine/water.
Once it coems to the boil, add the pasta and cook for about 1 or 1.5 hours, so the flavours really meld and combine. You can add flatleaf parsley near the end, if you want to.
Pour the remainder of the oil over the soup when serving, or instead drizzle chilli oil over each individual bowl. Serve with parmesan cheese.
Tagged with soup

Prune (shhhh!) & Whisky cake

2006-05-17T20:54:00.000+10:00

I'd been meaning to make this cake for months. I'd had it bookmarket, printed out, sitting on the recipe book shelf...everything, since June last year. It comes from Esther of Full as a Goog; which was the first other Melbourne food blog I found. Finding her early last year, I suddenly didn't feel so alone. Since then there's been an explosion in the number of Melbourne-based foodblogs.
I had already made Esther's Guinness Stout Chocolate cake, and she wrote so enthusiastically about this prune & whisky cake that I had to try it and when I discovered an ailing bag of discarded prunes on the fridge door I decided not to throw them out. Like her, I reckon people have weirdo issues about prunes and running to the toilet, and most people don't know prunes are simply dried plums. I love prunes; they're great for snacking! So, taking her tip I announced to people that it was a plum and whisky cake, and they were none the wiser. And they had a bonus dietary fibre boost. ;-)

Everything Esther writes about this cake is true; it's moist and springy, and has a sticky lemon glaze to glam it up. It's full flavoured and spicy; not unlike gingerbread. In fact one friend simply couldn't be convinced there wasn't any ginger in the ingredients! Plus it looks so impressive baked in its Bundt or Kugelhopf tin. Somehow a cake baked in one of those tins looks like you've put in way more time and effort than you really have. Perfect dinner party tip!
I hadn't heard much about the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts before, but most people who asked about the recipe knew it well. Some kind of foodie I am!!

Read on for the recipe:

Prune and Whisky Cake
(adapted from the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts via Full as a Goog)

For the cake:
2 cups pitted prunes
0.25 cup scotch whisky
2 cups water
0.75 cup vegetable oil
1.5 cups packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2.75 cups white flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
0.5 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cloves
0.5 tsp ground cardamon
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup buttermilk

For the glaze you need:
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
0.25 cup more scotch
0.25 cup liquid from the prune cooking

In a small saucepan, combine the prunes, whisky and water. Simmer for 20 minutes or until the prunes are very tender. Drain, keeping the liquid. Coarsely chop the prunes and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Butter and flour a 10 inch bundt pan. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together the oil and brown sugar with an electric mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat well. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and other dry ingredients. Add the flour mixture the batter, beating until well blended. Pour in the buttermilk and beat until just smooth. Fold in the chopped prunes.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for at least an hour. If you stick a knife in it should come out clean. Now cool the cake in a pan for 10 minutes. Then invert onto a serving platter and cool for 15 minutes more - still in the tin. Then remove the pan.

To make the glaze - combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Cook on medium-high heat for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat. Pierce the top of the cake with a skewer or toothpick in 10 places. Slowly pour the glaze over the cake, allowing it to soak in.

Serve to ooohs and aaahs. (with or without mentioning what's in it.)
Tagged with baking

Chocolate, date & almond torte

2006-05-13T13:13:00.000+10:00

This is the cake I made for my birthday back in March...remember, when I didn't have a computer? I was looking for something a little different, and because a friend was going through a period of wheat-free, dairy-free eating, as prescribed by his so-called 'witch doctor', another friend suggested he should make this long-time family recipe for his birthday, which was wheat and almost dairy-free. He didn't get around to it (ultimately buying a very excellent berry & soy custard flan from Silly Yak's), but because the recipe looked so good I gave it a go for my own birthday a few days later.
The whole cake only has 5 ingredients: dates, whole almonds, chocolate, sugar and egg whites and you simply chuck things into a food processor until "chunky" and fold them through a meringue. Incidentally, Kelly from The Occasional Epicure alerted me to the existence of frozen eggwhites, in the supermarket. Excellent idea.
It sounds simple, but this cake blew everyone away. Its texture and taste were so different that it's been one of the most popular things we've had at rehearsal this year (I seem to take most of my baked goods to rehearsals. As does Belinda. Those singers do get very spoilt!)
It's quite dense and chunky, but held together by the meringue and the sticky dates. In a fit of organic awareness, I bought my ingredients at a local organic supermarket, but after I paid $20 for a handful of dates and $10 for a small bag of almonds, I wasn't quite prepared to pay $34 a kilo for dark chocolate. I'm afraid I turned to Nestle Club for that because it was on special at the local shop! Fearing a lack of intense cocoa flavour from my not-quite-70% cocoa solids cheap-as chocolate, I jacked up the flavour with a few spoonfuls of Dutch cocoa powder.

Funny story: after I went out and bought all the ingredients, I came home to find that I'd left the recipe at work. I stood there in the kitchen in a dither. There was no way I wasn't going to make this thing now, after spending a week's salary on ingredients. I considered phoning my friend, until I realised she was off traipsing through mud in the countryside, so that option was out. I turned to my cookbooks to find any sort of tips on cooking similar style tortes with meringue bases, and what do you know...the first one I turn to in Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion is basically the same recipe as my friend's long-time family treasure, without the almonds! Saved! I was saved from ignominy!
Because I'm not on a dairy-free diet, I covered mine in whipped cream, and gave my friend his own mini version. Admittedly, his looked a bit like a wombat turd, so keep that in mind when considering presentation ideas....

This piece had been in the fridge for quite a few days. It keeps excellently...apart from the cream!
Read on for the recipe:

Chocolate, date & almond torte

6 egg whites
200g caster sugar
200g dates, stoned
200g dark chocolate
200g whole almonds, with skin on

-Preheat oven to 180c, and grease a 24cm springform tin well
-Place dates in a food processor and chop. Be quick and careful, because dates can turn into mush in the blink of an eye. Remove chopped dates.
-Add the almonds and chocolate and chop until "chunky".
-Beat egg whites until stiff, then slowly beat in sugar to form a soft meringue.
-Fold in dates, almonds and chocolate. Tip mixture into tin and bake for 1 hour.
-Turn off oven but leave cake in until oven is cold. Leave cold cake in tin overnight to soften before serving covered in whipped cream or mascarpone and berries, nuts etc.

Deviated Fishcakes

2006-05-09T16:46:00.000+10:00

I made these ages ago. Like Christmas-time. And the photo's just been sitting there languishing away. It's not the prettiest shot, so there's a good reason why.
I'd never got around to posting about these fishcakes, because, although I went by Nigella's recipe in "Feast" I changed it so much along the way that I could hardly remember what I'd done, and whether they even vaguely resembled the fishcakes she described. Anyway, I found her recipe on the internet, and have included it below.

The ones you see above were made with (hmm....thinking way back here)...tinned tuna. Not even plain tinned tuna, but one of those tins of flavoured lemon and herb tuna. Yes, I know they would have been better with tinned salmon, but we had tuna and I was looking for something to use up the mashed potato we had. I think there was parsley in the potatoes, because I can see green bits. Really, fish cakes are pretty much about using up leftovers, so I suggest treating all recipes as mere guidlelines for going it alone.
No matzo meal in our house either, so I did the egg wash and breadcrumb thing; using a combination of those lung-clogging fluro orange sawdusty things, and some crunchy Japanese panko crumbs. I also couldn't be bothered standing over a pan frying them, so threw them in a hot oven for a bit. I dunno...20 minutes? It does mean they don't turn crunchy and oily and golden, but it also means they are healthier. And less work, really.
One thing that held true for my deviated Nigella fishcakes; yes, the raw mixture smells revolting. It really does. Kind of puts you off wanting to cook them, but truly, once they're done, they are very tasty.
As you can see I served these with mayonnaise and tomato sauce. The only time I have willingly consumed tomato sauce in the past...oooh....10 years? I hate the sickly sweet stuff...turning my nice savoury food into a dessert. But with these, it just seemed appropriate. And it worked (in very, very small quantities!)
Read on for the recipe:

Salmon Fishcakes
Nigella Lawson "Feast"
For the fishcakes:
1 1/2-2 1/4 cold mashed potatoes
14-15 ounces of canned salmon
1 tablespoon of unsalted butter, melted (if the mashed potato hasn't got any butter in it)
Fat pinch of cayenne pepper
Grated zest of half a lemon
Salt and pepper
1 egg
For coating and frying:
2 eggs
1/2 cups of matzo meal, preferably medium
1/4 cups of unsalted butter
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

In a large bowl, mix together all the fishcake ingredients (preferably with your hands).

Cover a baking sheet with plastic wrap, plunge your hands back into the mixture and form fat, palm-sized patties. Place these on the baking sheet and put in the refrigerator to firm up for about 20 minutes to an hour--or considerably longer, if that helps.

Beat the eggs in a shallow soup bowl and sprinkle the matzo meal onto a dinner plate. One by one, dip the fishcakes into the beaten egg and then into the matzo meal, sprinkling and dredging over, as you help coat them. When you're done, put the butter and oil in a large frying pan, heat till it begins to fizzle and then fry the fishcakes on each side, until the crusts are golden and speckled brown in parts, and the soothing centers are warmed through.

Makes seven to nine three-inch diameter fishcakes

Storm o' muffins...

2006-05-07T12:06:00.000+10:00

The conservatorium where we rehearse every Saturday morning was having a garage sale; lots of old sheet music, opera scores, junk from the classrooms, old computers... We thought we'd cash in on the fact we'd be there rehearsing and set up a muffin stall, as we're trying hard to raise money for our 2nd European tour in September. It's pretty easy to whip up a batch of muffins, and the plan was to sell them for $2 each. Even some of the non-cooking blokes got involved; my favourite was my friend who hasn't baked for 20 years, in fact had never turned on his oven (I used to think it'd be the safest place in the world to hide valuables), but who turned up with a batch of rather yummy strawberry cheesecake muffins. All thanks to his housemate assistant!
I went a bit overboard - as usual - and covered for a few of us who weren't able to produce something - and did 3 batches. I guessed a lot of people would do the blueberry, choc chip variations, so I decided on a savoury cheese & bacon muffin. I also whipped up a maple syrup and pecan batch - more cup-cake than muffin - from the copy of Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2 I bought at the uni market this week. And because I had some wheat-free, dairy-free, egg-free, everything-free bread mix at home, I did a batch of cranberry & white chocolate muffins for allergy people.

Yeah, so we had razzer a lot of muffins...!

The unfortunate thing was that, during the hours we were around, very few people turned up to the sale! And we were also competing against the student cake stall (not much competition, to be honest) and a very successful bacon & egg sandwich stall....yum!
Although, we did manage to made $220, which is not bad. About 1 night's accommodation for one person in Rome, but hey, it all helps!
I have to commend my friend's peanut butter & Snickers muffins, courtesy of Nigella, but we noticed that they tended towards dryness. If you make them, watch out for that. In fact, muffins sitting out in the cold and wind for a few hours does them no favours. If we had a microwave by our side they would have really jumped back into life. My maple syrup and pecan cakes had great flavour (although a little too sweet for me), but a much better texture after being zapped for 15 seconds.

The best of my bunch I made were the cheese & bacon lot. I used the basic muffin recipe in the new edition of Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion. A great idea, to have a basic muffin to which you can add any sort of sweet or savoury flavouring. I used good bacon, and a bit of tomato relish, and they had great flavour. My brother reckoned they needed a bit more cheese, but he reckons a bit more cheese is the answer to everything. He might have been right, although maybe the trick is to use a stronger cheese rather than more cheese. I'm thinking Mersey Valley would work really well. Again, these have a better texture warm, rather than cold.
I've included the recipes for the cheese & bacon and maple syrup & pecan muffins, but not for the allergy ones. Mainly because they weren't that great (awful texture, although I was assured that was normal for those sorts of mixes) and not many of you will have unusual wheat/dairy/egg free bread mix in your cupboards.
Read on for the recipes:

Cheese & bacon muffins
Adaped from Stephanie Alexander, 'The Cook's Companion'.

Ingredients:
120g wholemeal self-raising flour
100g white self-raising flour (or use all white)
150g grated cheese (I used cheddar & parmesan)
3/4 cup milk (or buttermilk)
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
~3 slices of bacon, fried until crispy, drained and chopped
2 tablespoons tomato relish

-Preheat oven to 180C and grease a 12-cup muffin tin
-Mix flours, cheese in a large bowl.
-Combine milk, egg, oil and relish in a jug and whisk lightly.
-Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid.
-Add the crumbled bacon, and mix lightly. Do not overmix. It will toughen the batter.
-Garnish each with a few spikes of rosemary, if you feel artistic
-Spoon batter in muffin cases until two-thirds full, then bake for 20-25 minutes or until browned on top.
-Remove tin from oven and turn muffins out onto a wire rack to cool. Best served warm.
Makes 12.

Maple Syrup & Pecan cakes
Adapted from Donna Hay, 'Modern Classics 2.'

Ingredients:
90g softened butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 2/3 cups sifted plain flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
~100 grams pecans, lightly toasted and chopped

-Preheat the oven to 180C (350F)
-Beat the butter and both sugars until light and creamy.
-Add the eggs gradually and beat well.
-Add the milk, maple syrup, flour and baking powder and beat until just smooth.
-Fold in the pecans
-Spoon into muffin cases and decorate with half a pecan.
-Bake for 20 minutes, or until cooked, when tested with a skewer.
-Cool in the tins for 5 minutes. Transfer to a rack.
Makes 12.

Tagged with muffins

Man food!

2006-05-04T10:51:00.000+10:00

Ohmygaaaawd, did you hear that Orangette is marrying some boy who wrote fan mail to her about her blog??!! I'm a bit out of the loop 'cos I only just heard of this, but heck...love on the blogs! I don't know if this is wonderfully uplifting or a bit sad. I get some fan mail (and very lovely it is too), but only from girls. That's no use! :-) Hmmm...I'm guessing it's the cakiness of the blog. I'm not going to turn suddenly all meat-heavy on you, although it's actually more that way I eat. I really have more of a salt tooth than a sweet one, but baking is much more fun to photograph and blog about than some random chunk of steak I grilled with some broccoli. Yawn. There's no poetry in writing about a bit of chicken. There's poetry in baking things that people dream about.
My friends said they'd sabotage the site if I made any attempt to start trawling for a husband ("hello?!! Axe-murderers?! Crazy internet people!?! WEIRDOS?!"), so I'm not, although I'm yet to be convinced that there's a marauding team of crazy, internet murderers slavering over a foodblog about cakes! I have higher opinions of you than that! Maybe there's some fetish niche out there I don't know about; I do get some pretty suggestive Google references to my site.... But, still, it's good to know I'm so well protected. :-)
But, there you go. Somebody has proven you can find love on a foodblog, and that's a wonderful thing.

So, in a self-conscious meander away from baking, here's a BIG BLOKE savoury meat dish. No, I didn't whip it up especially for this post; it's something I made ages ago. I had this thing in my head (a "hot nut" in Anthony Bourdain-speak) about a chicken and chorizo stew. I didn't have a recipe for it, so I hunted around a bit on the internet and kind of played around with it from there. It should have used chicken thighs, but we only had breasts. Do try to use thighs, because they don't turn into balsa wood like breasts do (that sentence seems disturbingly suggestive) after long cooking. Thighs remain moist and juicy (there I go again...).
I'm not a big fan of chickpeas, but am coming around. This used a tin of them, and actually I loved it. I added a carrot and a few handfuls of spinach, just cos we had them. In fact, the whole dish was really great. It has really big, gutsy flavours. I didn't have Spanish smoked paprika, so I went heavy on the sweet Hungarian stuff and loved it. The chorizo was salty and punchy and I could have drunk the sauce like soup. My brother, who is pretty suspicious of the things I cook - "the stuff you cook is weird!" -was a big fan; reckoning that it tasted like Mexican food (???). Interesting. But, hey, if my very blokey brother liked it, I've done well in the appealing- to-men-thing. ;-) Definitely something I'd make again, especially as we seemed to have bypassed autumn and skidded into winter.
Read on for the recipe:

Chicken and Chorizo Stew
Adapted from a recipe on the website of the UK supermarket Waitrose.com

Serves: 6
Ingredients
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely diced
1 carrot, sliced
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika (or Hungarian)
1 teaspoon chilli powder
200g chorizo sausage, peeled and thickly sliced
1 organic chicken, cut into 6 pieces (chicken thighs are easier)
400g can chopped tomatoes
400g chickpeas, soaked for 24 hours, then boiled until half-cooked (I used a can)
1 bay leaf
Handful fresh spinach
salt and ground black pepper

Instructions
Sauté the onion, carrot and garlic in the oil until soft. Stir in the cumin and paprika and fry for a few seconds before adding the chorizo. Fry until lightly coloured, then add the chicken, turning the pieces to ensure they are evenly coloured. Stir in the tomatoes, chickpeas, bay leaf and, if necessary, a little water. Season to taste and simmer gently for 40 minutes. Add the spinach at the last minute.

This recipe was first published on Waitrose.com in October 1999.
Tagged with food & drink

Low-fat!! Chocolate torte!!

2006-05-01T21:30:00.000+10:00

This has to be the best low-fat chocolate cake I've ever tasted. It's no surprise that the recipe comes from Alice Medrich's "Chocolate & the art of low-fat desserts". I can't understand why this incredible book is out of print. I bought mine second-hand on eBay or Amazon, and it was a Very Good Decision. If you don't know much about Medrich or this book, do a bit of Google research - you'll probably end up placing an order yourself. I wrote a bit about her in my post about her low-fat chocolate birthday cake, and I've also tried her chocolate souffles and lemon blueberry cake (fabulous!).
A friend was having a girls night and asked if I could make something that was Weight Watchers compatible. I knew just the book to go to, and the recipe that I'd been wanting to try. Unlike the other Medrich low-fat recipes I've made, this one isn't too pedantic and tedious or involves 12 mixing bowls. I had it made and in the oven in about 10 minutes.

I think this recipe is just amazing. Basically it's a low-fat version of the flourless Chocolate Cloud Cake I made last year. But that one is WAY high in butter and eggs and calories. This one is butter-free and only contains 2 egg yolks. It's almost wheat-free too. And the taste and texture are just incredible. There is no way this tastes low-fat.
Medrich's recipe suggests serving this with her "enlightened whipped cream". Intrigued, I looked this up. Did you know that you can "extend" whipped cream by adding merinuge to it? What a great idea! Just beat up one egg white and 2 tablespoons of sugar and add it to your whipped cream. The amount you see on the cake is only 2/3 of a cup in total. The cream has a slightly different texture - lighter and more airy - but that was seen as a good thing by a few people who find plain whipped cream a bit too rich. Medrich has a concern about raw egg whites and includes a pretty tedious recipe for cooking them and making a cooked meringue, that frankly looked way too much work. We have a lower concern about salmonella and eggs here in Australia, so I ignored that and did a standard raw egg meringue. Nobody seemed to get sick...

Look at that texture! Melt in the mouth chocolate decadence, without the decadence. Ok, so we're not talking the fat count of a plate of steamed asparagus here, but as gooey chocolate cakes go, this is pretty damn good. There are 179 calories in each serve of cake (not sure how big that is) and 6.4g of fat. The enlightened whipped cream has 15.6 calories per tablespoon, and 1.38g of fat. I hate to think how many are in the full-fat version....
Read on for the recipe:

Fallen Chocolate Souffle Torte
Adapted from 'Chocolate & the art of Low-Fat Desserts'

1/4 cup ground almonds
3 tablespoons plain flour
3 ounces (90 grams) dark chocolate, chopped fine
1/2 cup Dutch cocoa
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup boiling water
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoons brandy
4 egg whites
~1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Serves 10
1: Preheat oven to 375 F/ 190 C. Grease and line an 8 inch/20cm sprinform cake tin.
2: Combine chopped chocolate, cocoa and 3/4 cup of the sugar in a large mixing bowl. Pour in the boiling water. Whisk until mixture is smooth and chocolate is completely melted. Make sure any cocoa lumps are dissolved. Whisk in the egg yolks and brandy. Set aside.
3: Combine the egg whites and cream of tartar in a smaller mixing bowl. Beat until soft peaks form. Gradually sprinkle in the remaining sugar and beat on high speed until stiff. Whisk the flour and almonds into the chocolate. Fold about 1/4 of the egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture to lighten it then fold in the remaining egg whites. Pour into the cake pan.
4: Bake for 30-35 minutes until a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs on it. Cool in the pan. The torte will sink - it's supposed to.

Medrich likes the look of the torte with just a dusting of icing sugar on top and enlightened whipped cream on the side. I chose to cover it in cream. Whatever your choice, here's the recipe:
Enlightened Whipped Cream
Adapted from "Chocolate & the art of Low Fat Desserts"

Pinch cream of tartar
1 egg white
2 tablespoons sugar
2/3 cup cream
1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Beat the egg white and cream of tartar until soft peaks form then add the sugar. Beat until fairly stiff.
In another bowl beat the cream with the vanilla until fairly stiff. Add the meringue to the cream or vice versa. Easy!

Cheesy Feet!

2006-04-26T20:47:00.000+10:00

.
Wheee! Pongy! Feet that smell like cheese!
Now, who hasn't seen this recipe in Nigella's Feast and not got the giggles? And tucked it away as something you've just got to try in the future. I've wanted to for a while, and when I saw a foot-shaped cutter in my bread baking store I had that thing at the counter before you could blink.
The problem is, you've really got to pick your audience. Who's going to appreciate cheese biscuits in the shape of feet? Even Nigella says she would back off from serving them to grown-ups, as that "mixture between yukky and cute might not play so well there. I wouldn't want to embarrass myself, you do see."
Evidently I don't have the same reticence. Heh. I had to bring a plate to a concert of songs from musical theatre, so I thought the crowd would be "worldy" enough to have a laugh. And it really worked; they were a great talking point, and many people came back with a friend to show them. They were also one of the only savoury offerings on the table, which helped them to disappear.
The only thing was that I was expecting more of a cheesy shortbread texture, but mine puffed up in the oven and turned kinda chewy. Possibly I overworked the mixture and/or left them in the oven a few minutes too long. Fan-forced ovens should be turned down about 10 degrees celcius too, which I didn't do. Guess I'll just have to make them again and find out! :-)
Read on for the recipe:

Cheesy Feet
From "Feast"

100g Cheddar cheese, grated
25g soft butter
50g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

-Preheat oven to 200C (lower if fan-forced)
-Dump all ingredients into a food processor and mix until the dough comes together. It may take a while. Form into a fat disc, wrap in plastic wrap and rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.
-Sprinkle your work surface with flour and roll out dough to ~3mm thickness. Cut out feet. The dough can be re-rolled until it is all used up.
-Place on a lined baking sheet and cook for about 10-12 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
-Biscuits will continue to crisp up as they cool, so take them out of the oven when still a little soft in the middle.
-Makes about 16ish.
Tagged with cheese

'What's for Pud?'...Rhubarb & apple cornmeal cake

2006-04-25T16:47:00.000+10:00

This is my belated entry into the St George's day celebration of English puddings, hosted by Becks & Posh and Monkey Face. I did hope to be a bit more organised, but hey, I'll play on the whole Australia is a day ahead thing.
My immediate thought when faced with the challenge of an English pudding is a treacle tart, straight out of my favourite Enid Blyton books. HURRAH! Let's find us some deserted cave and watch out for smugglers...and who's got the potted meat?? I don't think I've ever had treacle tart, and was a bit disappointed to discover it doesn't even contain treacle!! (it uses Golden Syrup!!)

But basically, it's a public holiday today and I'm lazy and couldn't be arsed making my own pastry. Also, I had a dish of stewed rhubarb from my grandmother's garden up in the country. Is there anything that is more British-sounding than rhubarb? I know Nigella's books are chock-full of the stuff. I flicked through my favourite British books - poring over Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver, Simon Hopkinson, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and some god-awful blue hardcover thing we have from the 60s that wants suet and lard in everything, but it was back to Nigella where I found a veritable abundance of choice. If I'm going to bake something I wanto someplace to take it, because believe it or not from the content of this blog, I'm actually on a low-carb diet (!). Things I bake I generally take to rehearsals for my friends to eat. Only Nigella had something other than crumbles and jellies, which aren't really easily portable!
Now, I've always though of rhubarb as a winter thing. My mum would make apple and rhubarb crumble on cold winter's nights, but I've noticed British foodbloggers get very excited about its short season around their springtime. Hmmm - I guess an English springtime is about equivalent to a Melbourne winter, eh? ;-) But, acording to Stephanie Alexander, Australian rhubarb is a year-round crop and is always pink and non-stringy. Rhubarb all year 'round for us!

I was very tempted by Nigella's rhubarb kuchen (being the dab hand with yeast I now am...) but kuchen really isn't very trad English, is it? Plus the rhubarb had to be in pieces, not in slush.
So, I discovered her rhubarb cornmeal cake. It used cornmeal and yoghurt -both of which I had available, and it didn't seem to matter if the rhubarb was in sludge form, so that was my choice.

I didn't have quite enough rhubarb slush, so I added an apple which I chopped into little pieces and zapped in the microwave. The point of the cornmeal is to absorb the excess liquid the rhubarb will give off, which is does well. It also gives a nice texture and crunch. If I were being truly English, I would have made up a nice custard to go with this; the combination would work really well. Nigella suggests a muscat-mascarpone cream, which I'd love to try one day. But for today I've just gone the double cream option.

This is a pleasant, tea-time sort of cake. It's not intense in flavour, but so many British puddings are not. I think it was Bill Bryson who commented about the British fondness for such "cautiously-flavoured treats", as though too much flavour was some kind of extravagent indulgence. I think he was referring to British sweet biscuits at the time, but it never fails to make me laugh.
Read on for the recipe:

Rhubarb & Apple cornmeal cake
Adapted from Nigella's "How to be a Domestic Goddess"

~250g cooked rhubarb (stewed with some sugar)
1 apple, chopped into small pieces and cooked until softish
150g plain flour
200g caster sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/3 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
155g fine cornmeal (polenta)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125 soft butter
250g (note: not mls) natural yoghurt

23 cm springform cake tin, greased.
Preheat oven to 180c

Mix the flour, bicarb, salt, cinnamon and cornmeal together. Beat the eggs with the vanilla in a small jug or bowl.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and the sugar, then gradually add the egg mixture, beating all the while.
Add the flour-cornmeal mixture alternately with the yoghurt. Don't overmix.
Add the rhubarb and apple and fold through. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 1 hour. Check to make sure it is not browining too quickly; it may need to be covered with some tinfoil. Let cook in its tin before turning out.
Tagged with: What's For Pud? and St George's Day

One-bowl chocolate citrus cakes (and a theory)

2006-04-25T12:02:00.000+10:00

When I posted about the one-bowl chocolate cherry cake a few weeks ago I also meant to include this photo of the cupcakes I made using the same technique; but with a jar of the (bitter!) grapefruit marmalade I made last winter. I took these to a market stall, where all except one were bought by the one person who was off to lunch at her daughter's house. I kind of hoped she wasn't going to give them to her grandchildren; with dark chocolate, not a lot of sugar and bitter marmalade, these were definitely for adult tastes!

I had an email today from a reader telling me of an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about a one-pot chocolate cake showdown. Recipes were made from recipes by Martha Stewart, Amanda Hesser, Nigella Lawson and Shirley Corriher. The article included the usual criticism of Nigella's recipes I have come to expect from US writers (I'm sorry!!). I find it really interesting that the criticism of Nigella’s recipes generally come from the USA – and I have a theory about this. I feel it's not actually to do with her, but with her American editors who are converting her recipes to American-style cup/volume measurements. Nigella's recipes use the more precise measurements by weight, which, when baking is really what you should be doing. Baking, by its very nature is all about accuracy, therefore you really need to weigh your dry ingredients rather than add them by volume. Volume measurements change depending on whether you "swoop or scoop", the humidity of the day, the altitude etc.etc. They're just not accurate enough, and this was reinforced when I went to my bread baking class this week and we were told always to bake by weight not volume. I do believe this was the case in this article because they complain about having to measure 3/8 cup of sour cream! Hehehe. In my Nigella books all her sour cream measurements are in millilitres, which are much easier to measure.
I find it really funny that the Brits & Aussies/Kiwis generally rave about her recipes and the Americans find them really inaccurate. The measurement systems are different. Doesn’t that say something?!?!?
Now I openly admit that I might be wrong about this, so I'm happy to hear anyone else's opinions - either about Nigella's recipes or the baking by weight VS volume argument.

Chocolate Cherry Brownies

2006-04-22T15:56:00.000+10:00

Again with the chocolate and cherry?? Heh, well, theyr'e a good combination, and when I saw this recipe on Deborah's site, I immediately bookmarked it to make ASAP. I love brownies and I love bottled sour cherries. Combining the two? Why hadn't I thought of that before?!

This is definitely not a low fat recipe. It has a whole block of chocolate plus a bit more, a whole packet of butter plus a bit more and 5 eggs. Ahem. But as I was taking it for an Easter day brunch, I rationalised that it was a time to indulge and celebrate, particularly as we'd just spent a stupidly large number of hours in singing in church services during Holy Week.

I found the cooking time for this wasn't enough. I took the pan out after 25 minutes, left it to cool on the bench and slice it up when it was cold. To discover it was still liquid in the centre. Hmmmm. This may have been because I doubled the amount of cherries in the batter. So, I had to return them to the oven, already cut up for about 10 minutes. If you decide to double your cherries, watch your cooking time. And ensure the cherries are well drained. The liquid left behind makes a great drink mixed with soda water! I also reduced the amount of sugar to 300g because 400g sounded quite a lot! I think reducing sugar can have an effect on moisture absorbtion too.

Next time I would add some cocoa powder to the batter. Chocolate in brownies gives a great texture, but it lacks the intensity of flavour cocoa gives. I think the best brownies are made with a combination of the two, although I did discover a brilliant recipe from Cooking With Amy about 2 years ago, which only uses cocoa.
Read on for the recipe:

Chocolate & Cherry Brownies
From Green and Black’s Chocolate Recipes: Unwrapped - From the Cacao Pod to Muffins, Mousses and Moles

300 g unsalted butter
300 g dark chocolate (minimum 60%, broken into pieces)
5 large eggs
400 g granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
100 g of drained morello cherries (I used about 200g)

Grease a roasting or baking tray.
In a bowl (placed on top of a pot of boiling water) melt the butter and chocolate together until thick and creamy
Meanwhile beat together sugar, eggs and vanilla extract until thick and creamy. The mixture should easily coat the back of a spoon.
Once the butter-chocolate mixture has melted, remove from stove and beat into the egg mixture
Sift the flour and salt together, and add to the wet ingredients. Mix until mixture is well combined.
Drain morello cherries and fold into the brownie mixture.
Pour mixture into the tray and bake for 20 - 30 minutes at 180C
Once finished baking, allow to cool and cut into pieces.
Tagged with baking

2nd loaf

2006-04-22T15:46:00.000+10:00

"Second loaf, same as the first, but a little bit louder and a little bit worse!!"

Hehe. Thankfully not. As a dutiful bread baking student I did my homework and made another loaf so I wouldn't forget how it's done. I'm pleased to note that, despite some panicky moments when I thought I'd killed my dough because it was sulking and not rising (cold kitchen) it came to life and transformed itself into this rather tasty light rye loaf, which I took to rehearsal this morning. Sorry, Belinda - maybe I'll try coffee scrolls next week??
So, it seems I can bake bread now. Mabe I should stand on top of a skyscraper and beat my fists against my chest.
Nah, on second thoughts, that'd really hurt.

Hands-on bread baking class

2006-04-21T10:20:00.000+10:00

Rye bread rolls
I have the computer back - yay! - and I'm currently on 2 weeks holiday - yippee! There's lots to catch up on with the backlog of posts I have, but I'll start most recently. Yesterday I went to a 1/2 day hands-on bread baking class at a place I've been visiting for a while to stock up on my Dutch cocoa and other baking bits'n'bobs.
Those who've been reading a while know of my irrational fear of yeast. I seem to have enormous difficulty trying to make anything that involves yeast and it really pi**es me off! Witness my very first attempt at hot cross buns . Ahem! I don't feel like a "real" home cook unless I've mastered bread. And none of this poncy bread machine rubbish - real, get-your-hands-dirty stuff. I did manage to make a proper, hand-made wholemeal loaf last year that really impressed me, but its flavour and texture were still lacking a little.

Marg & Maree's Baking & Breadmaking offer all kinds of classes and demonstrations, and as I'm on holiday and have time for self-indulgence I decided to go along and see how bread making is really done. After I came home with something like 5 kilos of bread I thought I'd gone a bit overboard, especially as I'm not really eating bread at the moment. But that's gone out the window; this bread is goooood!

White loaf
There's a maximum of 6 participants, so the class is very personal and friendly. After a bit of a talk about the properties of bread baking we took control of a bowl of dough that Maree had made up early that morning. Because of time contraints, and the amount of time needed for bread to rise a couple of times, we started off with this dough that had already had its first rise. With this we were to make a plain white high-tin load - as pictured above. My first time with soft, risen bread dough was a revelation; the stuff actually feels warm and alive! A bit off-putting at first. And if you're not bossy and authoritarian with it, it just will not behave for you. We were told kneading or pumelling wasn't required; just work and shape our dough, but with firm movements. Also chucking a whole lump of dough into a tin means the loaf won't cook well (too dense) so we were instructed to either roll it up like a swiss roll or divide it in two balls and place in the tin. As you can see my two balls were a bit uneven in size. Oops.

Not being able to stop when something is simple and perfect (I'd never make a good artist) I got excited with a random mixture of seeds, grains and polenta over the top. Added fibre! Also makes it easier to identify your tin. This bread is top stuff- it's not soft or fluffy like you'd buy in Baker's Delight, but that's a Very Good Thing. Our teacher believes the bread they sell in commercial bakeries is undercooked, so as to achieve that soft, fluffy, insubstantial texture.

Spelt french sticks
We then moved onto french sticks. This was fun because we now got to start off our dough from scratch. Because I have some friends on wheat-free diets I asked if I could make some spelt-flour bread. Spelt is an ancient grain used by the Egyptians and Romans, and a member of the wheat family. Many who can't tolerate wheat can have spelt, but not those with Ceoliac disease, because it still contains gluten.
We were shown various ways to shape our bread and encouraged to try a few. I'm quite impressed with my twisted loaf! The bottom loaf is simply a whole lot of balls of dough. You can pull each one off for a small dinner roll, but I didn't have huge success with shaping my balls, as you can see! Because we were slightly short of french-stick baking trays (they're very cool - like corrugated iron) everyone could only bake two sticks. Because I had "special" bread I got to bake all three. Hehe. There's a tip for you if you want to take home extra bead!
The spelt flour worked really well. I would have preferred to make a spelt load and plain french sticks, but this was better than I expected. I can hardly tell a difference in texture between the two types of flour.

Bonus buns!
We then moved onto large bread rolls. This time I chose to experiment with some rye flour. You can't use rye on its own because it's too soft so you need to use a base of half plain white flour. From that I added 1/4 light rye and 1/4 dark rye. I was the only one who took this route so it was easy to keep track of my bread!
Again we were shown various ways to shape it and encouraged to try them. Knot rolls, Kaiser rolls, Hamburger buns, Plaits, coils, flowers etc.etc.etc. We were make 6 rolls but would only bake three in indivudual tins; the three I chose are in the picture at the top of the post. I'm particularly pleased with my knot roll; it came out perfectly!

Now I'm going to give you a little tip if you're greedy or covetous (I am both). You only get to bake 3 rolls. After that you're given a demonstration of how to make coffee scrolls, using a soft bun mix and lots of spices. Because of time contraints you don't get to sample these buns as they're still rising when the class ends. However, if your daily activities take you past the shop later in the day OR if you are wiling to hang about and lend a hand with the cleaning and washing up later, you are welcome to take some of these home for yourself. It's only an extra 1/2 hour or so. And I highly recommend sticking 'round just to sample the coffee scrolls - rolled up around raspberry jam and iced with fondant. I got to take 3 home. Mmmm.

Additionally, the 3 extra bread rolls that weren't placed in individual roll tins and baked were placed in a scroll tin to show us a different baking technique - the "pull apart" roll thing. You can request these to be baked as well if you want to hang about. The woman who shared her tin with me had already gone home so I scored an extra 3 wholemeal bread rolls. Bonus!

Sweet coffee scrolls
At the very end of the class, after showing us the coffee scroll, we used some spare bread dough we had to try the technique ourselves. These were just for practice and were going to go in the bin. Good food going in the bin?? I don't think so! I asked to take my raw, rolled-up dough home with me (I wasn't the only one...) so I baked these up at home. They're a little worse for the wear from the fact the bag fell onto the floor of the car when I turned a tight corner too fast, but hey... One set is rolled up with raspberry filling and the other with some very spicy sambal oelek. Again, a bonus for the tenacious!

I really recommend this class. I did it on a weekday, but they're also offered on Saturday mornings. They're also offering a chocolate decorating workshop, which I think I'll be enrolling in pretty soon!
Cost for the 1/2 day was $65, and includes all ingredients plus the advantage of taking a heck of a lot of bread home with you. Our homework is to make another loaf this weekend so we dont' forget what we've learned. Lucky bread freezes well.....

Marg & Maree's Baking and Breadmaking
54 Bell Street
Heidelberg Heights VIC 3081
9455 1611

Chocolate cherry cake

2006-04-12T16:37:00.000+10:00

I've made variations on this cake a number of times. The method for it is incredibly simple; it's all made in one saucepan! Do try it - it's difficult to go back to multiple bowls and implements after these sorts of cakes.
This a very simple chocolate cake I found in Nigella's "How to be a Domestic Goddess". It deviously appears twice; once as a full cake with orange flavouring, and once as cupcakes with cherry tastes. In both instances the flavouring is provided by adding a jar of jam to the mixture, which is not nearly as sickly sweet as you'd expect.

Almost exactly a year ago I made cupcake versions of this cake, using bottled cherries rather than the cherry jam she suggests, and on several occasions I've made the chocolate orange store-cupboard cake using jars of the very bitter grapefruit marmalade I attempted making last year (I don't mention what's in the marmalade cos I don't think "chocolate grapefruit cakes" sound terribly tempting, to be honest. I get around this labelling 'issue' by going for the generic "chocolate citrus cakes!". Seems to fool the punters sufficiently...) Seriously, this is a cake you can whip up and have in the oven in about 10 minutes, and you'll have nothing to wash up afterwards except 1 saucepan and a few spoons. Plus, it looks pretty damn fine, doesn't it? This is the first time I've managed to get my chocolate ganache absolutely perfect. That gorgeous texture that starts to run photogenically down the sides of the cake but sets just in time. Previously I've always beat the ganache too long so it turns out like cake icing or whipped cream. Still pretty, but nothing like this. I'm very happy with this attempt! :-) Let's hope it wasn't a horrible aberration.
Update 13 April: I've just changed the cooking time and ingredients for this, as I used the recipe from when I made it in cupcake form and realised I hadn't updated all sections. If you've printed it out already I suggest doing it again! So sorry!
Read on for the recipe:

Chocolate Cherry Cake
adapted from "How to be a Domestic Goddess"

Cake:
125g soft butter
100g dark chocolate, broken
300g cherry jam (good stuff with not too much sugar added)
100g sugar (Nigella uses 150g. Up to you how sweet you want it)
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self-raising flour

Icing:
100g dark chocolate
100ml double cream

Preheat oven to 180c/gas mark 4
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. When nearly completely melted, stir in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to begin softening, then take the pan off the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the butter and chocolate are smooth and combined. Add the jam, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon and when is all well acombined stir in the flour. it's ok to have chunks of the jam still visible; desirable in fact!
Pour into a buttered and floured 20-22 cm loose bottomed cake tin. Bake at 180˚C oven for 45-50 minutes, until the cake has set (test with a knife or wooden stick).
Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
When the cake is cool, break the chocolate for the icing into little pieces and add them to the cream in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, remove from the heat, let cool in the fridge for about 20 minutes, and then whisk until thick and smooth.

Blue cheese, walnut & marsala spread

2006-04-07T16:11:00.000+10:00

Ho hum. Our computer is still broken. The motherboard crashed, which really shouldn't happen after such a short period of time. So it's sitting in a warehouse somewhere, and who knows when we'll be getting in back. Ho hum. So, I'm attempting to vaguely keep in touch with the world from my desk at work after hours. Ho hum.
I'm building up quite a collection of things to post about, not the least being my birthday celebrations last week, which involved a fantastic lunch and many presents with culinary themes. I hope to show you soon.

It's lucky that a few weeks ago I posted some photos and saved them as draft posts. It's all I've got, but it is something! What I found today is another canape topping for bits of crostini or cripsbread or crackers or whatever. It's the other canape I made for my friend party; the first being the egg and black truffle salsa, and is a slight variation on the gorgonzola and marsala canape topping from Nigella's How To Eat. I love the combination of blue cheese and sweet wine, so this idea grabbed me, plus it looked very quick and easy to whip up. Nigella recommends gorgonzola, but I was stingy and bought a wedge of that cheap foil-wrapped blue cheese you get in the dairy cabinet up near the Philly Cheese and Mini Baby Bells. I think it's from Denmark, and it costs about $2. I love my good-quality blue cheese, but I actually think this stuff works really well in this recipe. It's got a really strong salty kick that the marsala modifies nicely. Incidentally, I always thought marsala was kind of expensive so avoided buying a bottle for the house. I was a bit surprised to notice that all the different brands of marsala in the bottle shop were under $10!!! Hopefully not an indication of quality....

All you do is chop up your wedge of cheese (Nigella gave quantities and didn't use walnuts but I did everything to my taste and texture), and mash it up some cream and add your flavourings - fresh nutmeg, walnuts & marsala. I then topped it off with a quartered seedless grape. Nigella suggests flat-leaf parsley and notes that the grape option could tend towards cheesy 60s dinner-party tackiness (cheese and pineapple on sticks!). However, I didn't have parsley, and I quite liked the idea of cheesy 60s dinner-party tackiness! Plus the combination of sweet grape and strong blue cheese mixture works perfectly.

This is definitely high on my 'will-make-again' list. The mixture of flavour and texture is highly addictive and I found it very difficult not to scarf the whole lot down before I even made it to my friend's house. Once there, her husband and I found it difficult not to completely fill up on this stuff, and the offcuts of some brownies we were having for dessert. Mmm...blue cheese and chocolate brownies. What a combination.
Read on for the recipe:

Blue cheese, walnut & marsala spread

Wedge of blue cheese ~100-150g (cheap is fine, but it must be strong and salty)
Few tablespoons cream or mascarpone
A good grating of fresh nutmeg
A handful of roughly chopped walnuts
2-4 tablespoons marsala (to taste)
Cracker pepper
Flat leaf parsley or seedless grapes (to serve)

Chop the blue cheese and place in an electric mixer. Roughly mix and add the cream to create a smooth, yet thick consistency. Add the walnuts, nutmeg, marsala & pepper until you reach the taste and consistency you like. Store for at least an hour in the fridge for the flavours to meld. Allow to come to room temperature before spreading onto crostini or crackers. Top with chopped parsley or a quartered grape for true cheesy 60s presentation.
Tagged with food & drink

Truffled salsa and creamy egg

2006-03-29T20:11:00.000+11:00

The computer is still broken, but hopefully being fixed soon. In the meantime I've looked through my archive of photos waiting to be written about to find something that didn't necessitate bringing in a recipe book to work!
This one comes from a dinner party in February where my friends made the main course and one of the dessert courses, and I brought along some nibblies to have with drinks and two (yes, 2!) other desserts.

Last year a friend was helping another friend pack up their house before they married and moved to Paris, and they offloaded a lot of stuff from their fridge to him. One particularly gourmet item was Tetsuya's Black Truffle Salsa, which I know to be damn expensive. He took one sniff of it and decided it smelled revolting, like it had gone off, and was about to throw it in the bin before he pulled back and thought maybe he'd get me to test it. I did, and I confirmed that yes, that's what truffles were meant to smell like ("like petrol??!" "Yes, like petrol!")....based on my worldy experience of truffles having once had a tiny bottle of truffle oil in the cupboard...ahem.
So, when deciding what canapes to make I thought it'd be a good chance to use up this truffle salsa (ingredients consisting of black truffles, porcini mushrooms, olive oil etc.etc. all top stuff). I recalled that truffles are best served with a quite bland blanket of flavour, like potatoes, pasta or egg, so the flavour (and that petroleum taste) really shines.
I hard boiled up a couple of eggs and mixed them with some King Island Dairy pure cream. Yes, I know - decadent, but we're having truffles here. This is not the time for your Black&Gold dollar dazzler. To this I only added some salt flakes. Nothing else. And I have to say this egg mixed with cream and salt tasted damn good on its own!
I had some trouble with my fancy-pants Scandinavian wafer crackers, in that they wouldn't split into even pieces. They were the perfect raft for the egg & truffle mixture, but next time I'll remember that they must be consumed immediately, otherwise the toppings make them go soggy, and then they're not so great. So, there you go - fancy-pants black truffle and creamy egg canapes. Very, very nice! Perfect with some vintage champagne.

Delays....

2006-03-21T13:22:00.000+11:00

Apologies for a bit of a break in posts. I switched on the computer on Saturday morning to find it turned on, but nothing kicked in. Nothing booted up. I had nothing but whirring. I had to run out for a rehearsal, and since then we've started recording sessions for our new CD so I simply haven't even had a chance to contact anyone about fixing it! I'm coming home from work, grabbing dinner and running out to recording sessions that finish at 11.30pm. Hmmm.
I'm crossing my fingers that the next time I turn it on it will magically be working. Until then, I'm trying to keep in touch with the world from my desk at work. A backlog of good posts coming once I get set up again!