Sweet Treats – Banana Muffins
Bananas can be frozen. In Australia we take such kitchen knowledge for granted, knowing full well that over-ripe specimens can be whisked out of the bottom of the fridge where they risk stinking out the rest of your fruit and vegetable supply with methane.
Place them in the freezer, whole and un-peeled, and use them up in your cooking. Despite their alarming blackened skins, frozen bananas are perfect for breakfast smoothies, cakes, bread, frozen yoghurt, baby food, even cooked at the last minute in the odd Caribbean-style curry in place of plantains.
And that’s all before you’ve even made your next batch of muffins for lunch boxes this week.
Sweet Treats – Gluten-Free Raspberry Feather Cakes
It’s often where you least expect it. A trip to a supermarket aisle for gluten-free products and ideas is a dis-spiriting experience. Health food stores have lots of gluten-free produce but, if you are too shy to ask the usually helpful staff, give few clues about their uses. Local cafés might only offer one or two menu choices, including ubiquitous orange and almond cakes.
But then, without warning, you can stumble across a mother-lode of great ideas.
I came across this idea when I headed into a small shopping centre on the shores of Port Stephens in NSW for some lunch. Outside the one-supermarket, one-newsagent, one-butcher display was a set of food outlets. At first it seemed they offered the usual chips with everything but then there was a sandwich bar offering organic, gluten-free, lactose-free choices and the cake display alone was so perfectly drool-worthy I felt like doing a little dance. Read more…
Day 6 – Gazpacho
There’s something about chilled soups that challenges me to engage with them. Perhaps it’s because so many of them – vichysoisse for example – are weighed down by unnecessary creaminess or blandish flavours. It reminds me too much of the sort of food one might eat if recuperating from tonsillitis – in 1930.
We want something that refreshes on a hot day, not weigh us down. In a country where many think of a sunny 22°C day as wintry conditions – hello, Queenslanders – we understand exactly what a hot summer day is. We don’t so much cook on days like this as assemble something on a plate. We don’t want to be in a kitchen for any other reason than to pull something – a beer for example – out of the fridge.
Which is why there are chilled soups and, in a league of its own, there’s gazpacho.
Desserts – Chocolate and Olive Oil Mousse
At first glance, this striking combination – chocolate and olive oil – seems to come straight from the kitchen of a nueva cocina Spanish chef, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. This recipe has its roots firmly in Catalan households when severe food restrictions following the war compelled inventive home cooks to use what they had – a philosophy that speaks straight to my heart.
According to the author of The New Spanish Table, Anya von Bremzen, the story goes that Catalans would melt a small piece of dark chocolate – then prohibitively rationed – spread it on some toast, then sprinkle olive oil and a pinch of salt for a delicious treat.
Day 5 – Best-Ever Rigatoni and Meatballs
How on earth is it that after almost 900 recipes here, and another 100 for my book, that I have not written a recipe for good old pasta and meatballs?
Is it because we’ve forgotten the classics? Is it because we’re spoilt for choice and meal options? Is it because, with the prevailing trends for Peruvian food, dude food, meal trucks, pop-up restaurants and our continuing love affair with asian ingredients that we have simply over-looked it?
Of course we have over-looked it. Read more…
Basics – How to Cook a Steak
Photo courtesy of Another Pint Please (www.anotherpintplease.com)
A while ago a girl friend and I went out to dinner at a bistro in the pub of my former home town. It was a Tuesday night and I was surprised to see people were lined up out the door. We soon found out why: It was the weekly $10 steak night.
On offer were some very good cuts of aged steak - generous cuts of meat that we simply couldn’t afford as part of our grocery bill – but it placed my friend and I in a conundrum. To enjoy the steak, we would have to make a foray into that most blokey of all places – the pub barbecue grill.
I took one for the team and offered my services, terrified I would make a fool of myself.
I needn’t have worried.
Men – they were all men – all appeared to be massacring the meat a second time. One poured so much oil over his steak, the flames flared up into the extractor fans above. Others endlessly turned their steaks over, and over, and over. Every single person cut into their steaks at the end of the cooking time to check for done-ness.
Day 4 – Zucchini Fritters with Haloumi
Fritters are a wonderful way to a) use up leftovers or b) hide vegetables from fussy eaters or c) a great addition to lunchboxes. Feel free to use this recipe as a simple basis for anything you have in the fridge that needs using up before your next shop, or for one of those days when a light meal is really all you want. During hot weather, for example. In my case, a massive yum cha in the middle of the day necessitated the appearance of this meal. A bigger meal would have been counter-productive.
The zucchini in this meal makes about two cups when grated, so substitute for two cups of anything else; roasted vegies (finely chop them first), carrots, eggplant, even mushrooms. Read more…
Dessert – Chocolate Crêpes with Two Minute Berry Sauce
Crêpes are easier to make than you might think and one of the cheapest desserts at that. That alone should be enough to give them hero status but too often we ignore the classics in favour of pulling out a tub of ice-cream. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, she says.
A scant spoonful of cocoa is all you need to give your basic crêpe batter a sexy new look. The addition of berries, either fresh or frozen, gives them a make-over worthy of a dinner for two. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, this could even be deciphered as foreplay. Not that I’d know anything about that. At all.
Day 3 – Tapanade
This recipe was first produced for Olives and Olive Oils from Spain. You can find their website, which features fabulous recipe ideas for anything olive-related, here
To eat an olive is to taste the very essence of Spain. As the world’s largest producer of olives and olive oil, Spain’s culinary contribution to the world is unrivalled, a fact borne out over again whenever the leading chefs of the world are mentioned. There’s no denying it: Spanish cuisine is on trend.
But here in Australia, I’m thinking of how we can adapt Spanish recipes and produce to our table and to our lifestyle. We love great produce but we want ease of preparation. With the summer entertaining season fast approaching, we want to stay out of a hot kitchen and celebrate with brilliant produce, simply served.
Lime and Garlic Mayonnaise
Making your own mayonnaise is far simpler than you may think and with the help of a food processor or blender you can make it in less time than it would take to go to the shops and buy a jar.
By making it yourself you can add any flavour combination you want. I’ve been adding lime and garlic for what seems like all summer. It’s my favourite mayo of the moment and I use it on everything from chicken sandwiches to hot chips, vegetable fritters to barbecued meat to potato salad. A jar of the stuff will last in the fridge for a good two weeks. It goes without saying it will knock the stripes off anything you can buy.
Day 2 – Thai-Style Garlic Chicken with Rice Noodles
This started as a way to use up leftover prawns following Christmas celebrations, but as useful as it was, I over did it with the fish sauce. So, back to the kitchen, and this time, a more budget-friendly option has been made. The results? Brilliant.
Depending on your budget, you can use fresh rice noodles, available in supermarket fridges (including in Aldi), or the cheaper and always-useful dried rice sticks. You can use chicken breast if you must, but thigh fillets work well and are much tastier and better value. I used boned-out chicken marylands at $7.99 a kilo with lovely results.
Those of you who are a bit iffy about coriander can always adjust the amount you use, but don’t be too concerned that this recipe asks for a large amount – the garlic counteracts the strong flavours beautifully. Like all good Thai food, it’s all about balance between salty, sweet and citrus. Feel free to adjust the flavours to suit.
Dessert – Jenni’s Mango Sorbet
As regular readers may remember, and to my great regret, I am not a fan of mango. I know, I know. To utter such a thing in public is unconscionable.
So when the teenage daughter of a friend of mine offered me some mango sorbet during the Christmas week, I can only say that I was trying to be polite when I said yes. After all, she had gone to great trouble to make it, without an ice-cream churn. Then I tasted it and dear reader, I think I may finally have found mango nirvana.
With mangos at their seasonal peak right now there’s not a better time of the year, wherever you live, to buy a tray of fat beauties and to enjoy every mouthful. Read more…
Day 1 – Lamb Burgers with Beetroot Relish
Australians are, per capita, the world’s biggest consumer of beetroot. As if we needed further proof that we love burgers with beetroot more than anything else in the world.
It’s hard convincing our overseas friends just why we love it so – the only real way is to make them try a burger – with the lot, of course – to taste for themselves. As an american friend once observed, it is nowhere near as nasty as it sounds.
Still, there are those who have yet to be convinced. Beetroot is, after all, a very bossy and uncompromising vegetable. Tinned beetroot can be messy as well as overpowering. Perhaps then, you should approach the making of your next burger with a little more respect. Serve it up some beetroot relish instead. To heck with the naysayers. Read more…
How do you make God laugh?
So. Here I am, in a still as-yet-unpacked dining room, listening to a sleeping neighbourhood while the last Christmas pudding steams on the stove. I haven’t written one christmas card this year, have yet to buy any presents and am staring at the fast-approaching deadline that is my flight to Sydney in a little over 24 hours. It has come to this, the last post of the year before I shut up the shop until January.
And what a year it’s been.
It seems so hard to believe that a year ago I was in another state, children at home, dogs underfoot, a metaphorical and literal world away from where I am now. I was happy, busy, optimistic, tired after a momentous year. Read more…
Christmas – Ham Buffet
Last December, a TV film crew trailed behind me around a supermarket as I bought all the ingredients I needed for the following meal – all for less than $120 – and then went home with me and filmed over the following four hours as I whipped up the meal. Ten friends turned up, we were all filmed enjoying our Christmas meal on a budget and a genuinely great evening was had by all, even though I could not move from my shoulders down the following day.
The TV crew left, satisfied they had a great story, with promises it would air within the week.
It never went to air. It clashed with a similar story on another TV channel.
That didn’t stop me from proving that it IS possible to make a wonderful Christmas meal for just $10 a person. Even a year later, you can comfortably budget this meal for about $15 a head with plenty of food for at least 12 people.
You may have been wondering …
… where I’ve been over the last month.
As I said to one person, I’ve been scrambling. And I’m not referring to a dish of eggs either.
Sometimes, despite my best efforts to Keep Calm and Carry On, life throws such a monumental curve ball that there’s nothing for it but to stop and throw it back.
It’s taken a frantic month, but at long last it appears that my peripatetic life of the last eight months is finally at an end – this week I move into my own place in Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs.
It is neat, clean and has a beautiful kitchen with shiny new appliances. It’s a house I will have a great time cooking in. It’s a house I will write my second book in.
It is a house I will continue to blog from, with new recipes up from Monday 12th December.
Meanwhile, a selection of the best of the blog’s Christmas recipes will be put together this week in a selection of menus and ideas to whet your appetite and to answer your queries as you count down to your own celebrations. This is the time to ask questions about everything from how to ice your christmas cake to how to get the lumps out of the gravy, to what to do with leftover ham.
Thank you everyone for your patience and understanding during the last month, the end of what has been a very challenging year. Lets pop the champagne cork and start the countdown to the party season together.
Christmas – Fay’s Coconut Ice
What are the Christmas recipes you are renowned for? In my family, my mother can not walk into a family gathering on Christmas Day unless she is carrying a tray of fudge. A friend of mine makes deadly adults-only rum balls. My mother-in-law Fay makes coconut ice.
Perhaps more than at any other time of the year, this is the season for bringing out those treats we only EVER would consider eating once a year. Coconut Ice. White Christmas. Fudge. Marzipan Fruits. That bottle of homemade Baileys/slivovica/Grappa. Sometimes it’s a bit twee and we only ever eat it because we’re told that it’s always done it this way and to do otherwise would invite excommunication from your family.
A Pocketful of Diamonds
I am sitting in a kitchen in Sydney, my hands over my mouth, wide-eyed with shock. It is a good thing that the only stool in the room is right behind me as my knees have given way and I have slumped noisily onto the chair. Not a minute before, I was cooking, completely in the moment of creativity, concentrating on the work ahead. Now, I am jelly.
Margaret Fulton has just walked in.
In this day of celebrity worship, the term Hero has been dumbed down – a lot – so it won’t surprise any of you to know I tend to take my heroes more seriously. I want to be profoundly influenced by them and I want to change my behaviour because their story touched my life. I use the term hero very sparingly. In fact, I only have three genuine heroes that have influenced me and they have remained unchanged for the last three decades. Nelson Mandela. Margaret Fulton. The Dalai Lama.
I had an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama earlier in the year. (Well, me and about 2000 others to be exact, but when the man talked, he was talking just to me, I’m sure of it.) I was still feeling on a bit of a high having seen him at a safe fan-girl distance and thought that it couldn’t get better than this. But sometimes, life hands you a diamond: One day last month, I opened my emails and saw an invitation to come and cook with Suzanne Gibbs. Read more…
Dessert – Orange and Vanilla Cream Shortcakes
When you get the chance to cook for one of your food heroes, you don’t want to muck it up. If possible, you want to practise it. Have a trial run. Test it for taste. Check to see that you will have enough time to cook it. That all the ingredients will be at the ready. That you can, indeed, actually make it without making a complete fool of yourself.
All of this is very commendable, until a promotional opportunity gets thrown into the mix. When someone suggests you cook using their ingredient, you want to really do your prep work. But then the PR babes up the ante and add a mystery ingredient. Perhaps it will be fruit. Or chocolate. Strawberries and chocolate would be fantastic to work with but what if they don’t have it?
Oh and as if that’s not enough, you’ll have to serve it up to a bone fide Doyenne of food writing and to three other food bloggers. The recipe will also have to be shared with your readers and countless others.
So, no pressure, then. No pressure AT. ALL.
Day 6 – Spring Lentil and Spinach Soup
My lovely friend Jazmin has moved to the northern climes of sub-tropical NSW but often travels south to visit friends and to work. Last week we were all under the one roof with mutual friends, five gypsies bought together by circumstance. When she left to head home, she said, “I’ve bought some spinach and broccoli, use it up. Broccoli makes a great soup.”
Broccoli does make a great soup, but it was the spinach that caught my eye and it got me thinking about other spring flavours. A lentil and spinach soup is a fairly traditional offering, but when lightened with lemon and yoghurt, a spring evening suddenly seems much more enjoyable proposition.
