Archive for the ‘Recipes’ CategoryIvonne from Cream Puffs in Venice and Orchidea from Viaggi e Sappori have created a special, one-off food event, dishes of comfort, to celebrate special dishes people loved as a child.
I loved Ivonne’s story of being brought up by her Grandma, and the Italian food they ate. However, despite my mum’s love of food, when I was growing up in the 1980s, “typical” Australian food was quite bland. It wasn’t easy to find the range of ingredients that are stock standard in supermarkets today, and the influence of food from non-European cultures hadn’t permeated Anglo Australian culture (particularly in country South Australia). So, our dinners consisted of tuna mornay, roasts on Saturday nights, boiled vegetables with sausage or steak, and cold salads in summer. I think a lot of dishes at that time had nods to Asian and Italian food, but the dishes were heavily anglicised and had lost touch with the original spices, sauces, and techniques that made the food notable in the first place. My grandmother (on my father’s side) also loved food and cooking. She lived in a different state to us, so we only saw her about once a year. However, almost all my memories of her involve her kitchen, her garden and food. Grandma constantly wore an apron, and loved to bustle around the kitchen, taking care of everyone and talking for hours (seriously) on end. At lunchtime we would gather around a table laden with food. There were plates of salads, cold meats, sweets and fresh iced doughnuts that Grandma would sneak out to buy early in the morning when my brother and I came to visit (Grandma was not of the school of thought that worried about childhood obesity). Despite Grandma’s love of cooking, I didn’t spend enough time with her to learn her recipes. My other strong childhood memory of food is eating fresh, summer fruits. Until I was eight years old, I lived in a fruit and grape growing region in South Australia called the Riverland. Our large backyard had apricot, nectarine, plum and almond trees, and I took full advantage of them every summer. Even when we moved away, fruit and vegetables remained amongst my favourite foods - one of the reasons why becoming vegetarian was a very easy decision. Anyhow, this is a roundabout way of saying that it was hard initially to think of ‘tasty, comfort dishes’ from my childhood (especially dishes that were vegetarian), partly because my family don’t come from a wonderful tradition of food, like Italian, Japanese, French or Indian, and partly because my wandering childhood meant that I didn’t have a consistent experience of particular dishes. However… there is one dish that holds an extremely special place in my memory: cauliflower cheese (that’s cauliflower au gratin for you francophiles). We ate cauliflower cheese with formal, roast dinners and on special occasions like Christmas, so I associate the dish with wearing my best clothes, setting out the mint sauce on the table, using Grandma’s special crockery and running around waiting for guests to arrive. I loved cauliflower cheese so much I would always save it until the end of my meal so I’d leave the table savouring the taste in my mouth. Even better than eating cauliflower cheese at dinner was eating the leftovers the next morning. After a roast dinner I could carefully scrape together all of the leftover vegetables and gravy, and cook them up in a fry pan as bubble and squeak. Yum! While our Christmas dinners are much more modern these days, as befits hot Australian summers, my poor mum still has to make cauliflower cheese for me, and I still leave it until last to eat. So, here is my family recipe for cauliflower cheese. Enjoy! Ingredients Method Melt butter. Mix in flour. Stir well – at least a minute (must all be incorporated). According to my Dad, this is the secrete to a white sauce, lots of stirring to remove all lumps. Gradually add milk and stir very well after each addition (lift off the heat if getting too hot). Add salt & pepper, nutmeg and mustard. Add grated cheese. Meanwhile, lightly steam the cauliflower then add to a quiche or baking dish. Cover the cauliflower in white sauce and bake for about 20 minutes in a 180 degree oven (or until the cauliflower has turned golden brown). Enjoy! KP’s mention of the Summer salad blogging event has encouraged me to post a recipe for my very own Long, Green and Pointy Salad, which is so simple and so yum. Ingredients
Method Drop the corn cob in boiling water, and while that’s cooking, blanche the asparagus (drop into boiling water for 2-3 minutes and then refresh immediately under cold running water). Then blanche the beans (gives these at least 3 minutes to boil), and snow peas (a bit less than 2 minutes). When the corn is cooked, refresh that under cold water too, and cut off the kernels. Then you can either arrange the snowpeas, asparagus and beans neatly onto plates, and toss a handful of corn kernels onto each plate, or just mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Add salt and pepper, and drizzle with balsamic and oil or vinaigrette. Variations Add slivers of roasted green capsicum (bell pepper) for some additional flavour, or substitute broccolini for the asparagus. Enjoy! AC Over in sunny California they’re hosting a summer salad blogging event. I’m contributing my favourite salad - chickpeas, red capsicum and parsley in a sesame and lemon dressing.
Ingredients 250g dried chickpeas / two cans, drained Method Cook the chickpeas / open cans and drain. Finely chop capsicum, parsely and red onion and mix well. In a cup, combine 1 tablespoon each of sesame oil and lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Just before serving, mix right through the salad. Enjoy. The Verdict OK - so I’m biased but I think this salad rocks. The sesame oil and lemon give the dressing a warm zing. The chickpeas soak in the flavours, while the capsicum, onion and parsley retain their fresh taste. It’s a good choice for vegetarians because you get protein and fibre from the chickpeas, iron from the parsley, and vitamin C from the capsicum. For a healthier version leave out the sesame oil. It still tastes good. Because it’s such a simple salad it’s easy to substitute or add your favourite ingredients. I’ve used coriander instead of parsley, and sometimes make it with cherry tomatoes. On Friday I was surfing the net when I hit upon a food blogging event hosted by Owen at Tomatilla. It’s called Paper Chef and is modelled on everyone’s favourite Japanese cooking show, Iron Chef. The idea of Paper Chef is that anyone can nominate an ingredient. The day of the event, Owen randomly selects three items plus a fourth ‘topical’ theme ingredient. Everyone hits kitchen stadium and has a weekend to come up with a dish. This time around the ingredients were cherries, peach, and a new / rediscovered herb. The theme ingredient was something hot / spicy (because of the sweltering temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere).
Ingredients 1/4 cup white wine vinegar 1/2 cup water 1/4 cup brown / unrefined sugar Small bag dried peaches, cut into about 1.5 cm pieces 10 cherries, stoned and cut into quarters 1/2 teaspoon dried cinammon 3/4 onion, minced 1 tablespoon peeled and minced ginger Handful finely chopped fresh mint Method Add all the ingredients bar the fruit and mint to a small saucepan and bring to the boil over a medium heat. Stir as needed. Lower the heat and let it stew for about five minutes. Add the fruit and mint. Let it reduce until there is almost no water left. Stir occasionally. If the peach hasn’t softnened, add a little more water until ready. While chutneys are often served with a hot curry, I The verdict I’m not a fan of chutney - it’s often too overpowering or sweetly jarring for my tastebuds. However, cooked from scratch and eaten fresh I really liked it because the flavours were real and had depth. The dried peach has a lovely naturally sweet flavour, without being too sickly. The cherries gave the chutney a fresher sweetness, and a beautiful maroon hue. I also added a bit of cinammon to bring out the flavour of the fruit. For my rediscovered herb I used fresh mint. Even though mint is a really common herb with a gorgeous aroma, it’s always an aspirational ingredient for me. On the rare occasion that I buy mint, it languishes on my window sill until it’s so wilted I have to throw it out. It’s not that I don’t like it, so much as it doesn’t quite work with the foods I routinely cook. I’m a huge fan of bitter, creamy goats cheese and love to pair it with a dry, rough biscuit and a sweet topping. Normally I use quince paste, but it worked equally well with the sweet fruit chutney. All up, I was surprised at how easy it is to make chutney. The base ingredients are all common items that most people will have sitting around in kitchen cupboards. Then you basically add whatever ingredients you like for the main flavour - fresh or dried fruits, tamarind or vegetables. Ever since I started getting into food blogs I’ve been reading about online food blogging events. The idea is that every month a different blogger ‘hosts’ a cooking event and chooses a theme ingredient. Bloggers from around the world then come up with a recipe using the theme ingredient and send a link to their blog to the host.
Here’s what I did: Ingredients: 1 litre of vanilla soy milk Method: Leave the sago to soak in water for a couple of hours. Drain and set aside. Heat the soy milk in a heavy-based saucepan over mild heat then gently add the sago. Stir gently with a whisk. Add the sugar incrementally, stirring through slowly. Leave on mild heat for about ten minutes, or until the pudding is cooked through. At the end, add the cinnammon and vanilla and stir through. Remove from heat and let the pudding cool. Take out the cinnamon and vanilla stick. Serve with raspberries (or fresh or stewed fruit of choice) on top. I haven’t tried sago pudding before but was happy to find it’s easy to cook with. The recipe was tasty, although you could use smaller portions because it’s a hearty feed! NB: I did a bit of Internet research beforehand to check if soy milk could be safely substituted for cow’s milk, or coconut milk, in sago pudding. I read a couple of sites which suggested that the pudding would not set, so I added some corn flour. I don’t think this was necessary. Last night I was all ready to try out the snow pea salad recipe. I’d bought the ingredients and planned to have it with steamed veggie dumplings. Unfortunately, the bamboo steamers I was using caught fire while I was in the next room watching television. Who knew that leaving flammable items unattended on a stove could be dangerous? By the time I smelt something funny the flames were big. I had a moment of thinking that I was going to burn down our apartment. And probably somebody else’s apartment. And we didn’t have insurance. I mustered my latent firefighter skills and threw a cotton teatowel on the burning mass. At least this dampened the flames enough to let me grab the saucepan handle, which fortunately had not heated up because the flames had grown upwards rather than outwards. I carefully maneuvered the now burning tea towel-steamer-saucepan to our sink and let the cold water run over it. This helped, along with cupfuls of water, and eventually the flames died. The whole experience only lasted a few minutes, but by the end I was shaking. It didn’t help that the house had filled with smoke - amazing how quickly it forms and spreads. Needless to say that my carefully rolled dumplings were ruined. Not wanting to push my luck I decided to stick with a cold sandwich for dinner. I might try again tonight. In breaking news, Andy and I did the unthinkable today and went grocery shopping. Our shop-ups involve a bit of guesswork as to what we reasonably think we might cook in the next week. This time in an attempt to be realistic I by-passed both the snowpeas and dill. Which is a bummer, because when I got home I stumbled on a great snow pea salad with dill, lemon and garlic at Veggie Way. Veggie Way is a written by a vegan living in Turkey and posts on great recipes with a Middle Eastern flavour (thanks to two peas, no pod for linking to it). Guess I’ll be hitting the fruit shop again this week. |
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