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Recipe: Apricot Mousse, or possibly cold soufflé – a reconstruction

Posted on April 20, 2014 | 9 Comments

Happy Easter! I have heard the words ‘Christ is Risen’ in at least twelve languages, and have learned how having faith in the Resurrection is quite a lot like barracking for the Melbourne Demons, except that one’s hopes are more likely to be fulfilled in the former case. (Apparently, our minister has been a Melbourne supporter since the mid-sixties. During that time, Melbourne has won precisely zero premierships, and is mostly found holding up the ladder, or, as my father would have it, ‘lulling you into a false sense of security which may well turn out to be a true one…’).

Also, I finally got to sing a descant, so now I really feel like it’s Easter. You can’t have a resurrection unless you spend serious time above the stave, that’s what I always say. It’s possible that my doctrine is a little suspect…

My family used to have a big get together every Easter, with roast lamb and all the trimmings, followed by some sort of spectacular dessert, always provided by my Oma. The year I was ten or so, she produced this amazing cold apricot soufflé, a beautiful, light, pale orange concoction, made even more exciting to my ten year old mind by the little Easter Eggs decorating it.

I’m not sure why this recipe, of all the recipes Oma ever made, stayed with me, but it did. And, of course, I have no idea what the recipe was. I had hoped it would be in Margaret Fulton (I have found a number of Oma’s recipes, suitably adapted, in the pages of my Margaret Fulton cookbook), but the only apricot soufflé in her pages was a baked one – not ideal for when one is expecting guests, really. I did, however, have a recipe for Apple Nougat Soufflé in a Family Circle cookbook from my childhood, and the combination of whipped cream, egg-whites and gelatine sounded about right for the effect I remember. (No, this recipe is not vegan. Not even a little bit. Sorry. In fact, this might well be the least allergy-friendly recipe I’ve ever done – oh no, wait, it *is* gluten free, so that’s something!)

So it was just a matter of changing a lot of flavours. And some of the method. And… well, you know by now what I’m like with recipes. The result is not Oma’s soufflé – I don’t think Oma would have used orange flower water, and she certainly wouldn’t have used peach schnapps or made a praline garnish – but it is light and fluffy and apricot-flavoured, and it does have little pastel Easter eggs on top. The spirit is right, even if the actuality is a little altered.

(We lit candles at the service today for those who were no longer with us, and were told of the Latin American tradition of saying ‘presente’ as the names of the dead were read out, to indicate that they were still with us. This is a tradition I like very much, and I hope it will be continued. But for me, Oma is far closer to me in the making of this soufflé than in the lighting of a candle. Presente!)

Your Shopping List

1 1/2 cups of dried apricots

90 g butter

1/2 cup white sugar

1 tablespoon honey1/2 cup pistachios, chopped

1/4 cup peach schnapps

3 tsp gelatine

1/2 cup caster sugar

1/2 tsp orange flower water

5 eggs, separated

1/2 cup cream

small chocolate eggs in foil

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Posted in desserts, food memories, gluten-free, Recipes

Tagged apricot, cream, desserts, eggs, gluten-free, mousse, peach schnapps, pistachios, recipes

Recipe: Vegan Choc-Cross Buns with Tahini and Apricots

Posted on April 19, 2014 | 11 Comments

I take Easter, and particularly Good Friday, very seriously. It’s not just because of the sheer number of professional commitments I have around Easter (and Good Friday is pretty much the peak of these, as I tend to have a late service on Thursday evening, then help lead the Way of the Cross procession through the city all morning on the Friday, before settling in for an afternoon service somewhere – Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday are relaxing by comparison!), or even just about the religious aspect, though this is important to me, too.

In fact, these days I have a personal Good Friday ritual that involves fish and chips and a re-watching of the really good 1971 Jesus Christ Superstar film – because I spend so much of Easter feverishly keeping track of how many more rounds of chant I need to do, or where in the pew sheet I am, or how to make that hymn scan in Italian, or concentrating feverishly on using my voice efficiently so that it actually lasts through four days of epic singing, that there really isn’t much room for personal religious observance. I’m too busy concentrating on doing my job right! And that’s totally fine, but I then need something that will let me stop and contemplate the season, and it turns out that JCSS is great for that. Especially this year, when I’ve spent so much time living in Passion land, between St Matthew, and the readings this week, and listening to the St John Passion sent to me by my pen-friend’s mother.

I just got totally distracted from what I was going to say, which is that for me, Good Friday is also sort of a birthday. I was born on Good Friday in 1976, so I tend to view the entire Easter Weekend as fair game for birthday gatherings, if there is no time on the day itself. And the first thing my mother ate after I was born was a hot cross bun, so I am undoubtedly pre-disposed by the conditions of my birth to take hot cross buns seriously, too!

Anyway, after doing the Hot Cross Bun class at Gewürzhaus, I was consumed with the need to make hot cross buns, repeatedly. And when I saw the recipe for the choc-chip kind (which I actually view as Not Proper Hot Cross Buns, but never mind that), I was immediately seized by the conviction that these needed to be veganised. Of course, I then got totally overwhelmed by singing commitments, but yesterday’s afternoon service, in addition to being long, was also fairly inaudible from the organ loft, and so I found my brain turning to recipe design. As one does. In particular, I could not help thinking that chocolate tahini would make an amazing substitute for all the butter and eggs that one normally finds in hot cross buns. Oh yes, indeed. And since there is at least one vegan in the choir I’m singing with tonight, this is clearly exactly the right time to unleash vegan chocolate hot cross buns on the world!

Happy Easter to you, if you celebrate it. As for me, I’ll be singing…

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, bread, cakes, dairy-free, egg-free, foodie challenges, nut-free, Recipes, Special occasions, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, apricots, cherries, chocolate, dairy-free, easter, egg-free, flour, foodie challenges, hot cross buns, nut-free, sesame seeds, tahini, vegan, vegetarian, yeast

Recipe: Absurdly Cute Meringue Easter Bunnies

Posted on April 17, 2014 | 4 Comments

This is yet another one of those recipes that happens when I decide to make lemon curd, and then have to figure out something to do with all the egg whites. I was just going to do plain meringues, but then for some reason my brain (which is not usually a particularly visual organ) came up with this image of stylised bunnies. I drew the design on a piece of paper to see if it actually looked bunny-like outside my brain, and it did! After that, it was just a matter of figuring out what colour to make the paws and ears, and how to do little bunny-like faces…

Your Shopping List (for 12 bunnies, which is what I would have had if I hadn’t managed to stuff up on separating one of my eggs)

4 egg whites (use the yolks for lemon curd, or maybe a huge batch of mayonnaise)

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1 1/3 cups of caster sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla paste

food colourings and flavours to taste – I used rose, violet and orange essences.

coloured mini choc chips, or silver cachous, or other decorations for faces.

several piping bags, if you don’t already own them – you will probably need one for each colour, unless you are much bigger on washing up than I am

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, biscuits, confectionery, dairy-free, foodie challenges, gluten-free, low fructose, nut-free, Recipes, vegetarian

Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, bunnies, dairy-free, easter, eggs, foodie challenges, gluten-free, low fructose, nut-free, sugar, vegetarian

Farmers’ Market Post: Return to Coburg Farmers’ Market

Posted on April 13, 2014 | 1 Comment

I am back, having survived the St Matthew’s Passion with my vocal chords intact! It was a glorious, glorious thing, and I am itching to sing it again and also to learn all the soprano and alto arias and maybe sing them one day, and *also* I have the biggest music crush ever on Andrew Goodwin, the brilliant tenor who played our Evangelist. He has absolutely the most superb tenor voice I’ve ever heard – he just floats over those top notes so easily and gently, but he can also be wonderfully dramatic in the sections where this is called for. Swoon. Being in Choir Two, I was able to appreciate this from pleasingly close quarters. Though not as close as the altos. Another reason I should have sung alto. Yes, I am a very sad case. But a voice like that doesn’t come along every day, and he seemed like a thoroughly lovely human being, too.

*****

(And that was the sound of me losing several minutes to looking up said tenor on YouTube and listening to the sadly small number of his recordings I was able to find. No CDs yet, alas…)

******

(Also, the Palm Sunday service I was at read the entire text of Matthew 26 to 27, which is basically the text of the St Matthew Passion, with different readers being different characters and the congregation doing all the crowd responses. It was all I could do not to burst into song. In German. Because it turns out that somewhere along the way I memorised all the German crowd bits. Oh dear…)

******

I have even more singing ahead of me, with Easter coming up next weekend, but this is probably not why you are here, so maybe I should consider getting to the point of this post, which is that Andrew and I actually managed to get back to the Coburg Farmers’ Market this weekend, for the first time in over a month. We did manage a flying visit to Flemington last week, but there was no time to write about it afterwards, what with choir followed by Bach. Due to singing, work, and the resulting extreme levels of exhaustion, I’ve been having to resort to the local greengrocer, and sometimes even the supermarket, for my fruit and veg for about the last six weeks, and it’s really not the same. In the meantime, Melbourne has moved from high summer into quite definite autumn, with more varieties of apple than I can poke a stick at, and nuts of all kinds, as well as the last of the corn, eggplants, beans, capsicums, and even a tomato or two.

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Posted in Farmer's Market, Photographic Posts

Tagged coburg farmers' market, farmers' market, photographic posts

Anyone Can Cook Fabulous Vegetarian Food: Easter Inspirations!

Posted on April 1, 2014 | 2 Comments

So apparently the Tofu Challenge turned out to be kind of an April Fool’s joke on my part, since I never did manage to create a tofu recipe (though I did cook with tofu *three whole times*, so at least I achieved that much in my pathway towards vegetarian enlightenment).

But it’s a new month, which means it’s time for a new challenge, and since my singing diary tells me that Easter (and laryngitis) is fast approaching…

The APril 2014 theme is Easter Inspirations

(because God is love, and food is love, and I don’t think I’d better continue on to the logical conclusion of that thought or nobody will ever let me sing in their church again, but meanwhile my brain has moved on and is considering an entirely new series of heresies about transubstantiation and this is what happens when I’m doing too much singing and not enough sleeping.)

Vegfoodlogo

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Posted in anyone can cook vegetarian food, foodie challenges, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged anyone can cook fabulous vegetarian food, easter, foodie challenges, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: Sweet and Sour Roasted Root Vegetables with Lemon Myrtle and Quinces

Posted on March 30, 2014 | 3 Comments

I’ve been singing all weekend. In fact, I’m beginning to feel like the Mystery Chorister, I’m doing so much church music in so many different venues at present. I’m also learning a lot about architectural styles of different denominations around Melbourne, which are alarmingly consistent at times. Something tells me that there just weren’t too many church architects / interior designers out there…

Anyway, after being out from 8am until 6:30pm today singing, I wanted to make something simple for dinner – the plan was for roast vegetables with gribiche sauce and a broccoli salad. But then gribiche seemed a bit too much like hard work, and then I wondered how quinces would roast with all those sweetish root vegetables, and then I had a probably unwise epiphany about lemon myrtle, and the next thing I knew, the menu had changed utterly in personality. The gribiche got replaced by a garlicky cannelini bean mash, so that we could pretend that there was some protein in the meal. And the vegetables? Well, they are actually rather nice. I was worried that the vegetables would be too sweet, but they really aren’t, and I love the way the quince has sort of camouflaged itself, so you pick up something that looks like a sweet potato, and find that it is actually mildly sweet and perfumed and fruity – a stealth quince! Yum.

Your Shopping List

1 large beetroot

1 quince

2 small onions

2 small potatoes

8 smallish carrots

2 small-medium parsnips

1 gigantic or two small sweet potatoes

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp dried lemon myrtle

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

olive oil

salt

pepper

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Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low glycemic index, main courses, nut-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

Tagged beetroot, carrots, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low GI, main courses, nut-free, onions, parsnip, recipes, spring onions, sweet potato, vegan, vegetarian

Recipe: End of Summer Harvest Polenta

Posted on March 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

My garden is almost ready to bed down for the winter. The zucchini, pumpkin and melon vines have shrivelled to nothing, the rocket has bolted, and this evening I went out to pull up my basil plants, pick the last of my tomatoes, and harvest a final handful of tiny capsicums, and five corn cobs ranging in size from medium-small to positively miniature.

Last harvest of the summer

If I have time in between my intensive Easter singing schedule (new personal best this year, with five services over four days, not counting Palm Sunday services and the Saint Matthew’s Passion I’m singing in on April 5-6), it will soon be time to weed and dig and compost and maybe put in some winter vegetables that will give nutrients back to the ground.

But in the meantime, it’s time to celebrate the dying summer with this beautiful feast from my garden!

This polenta has it all – it’s soft and creamy, with a little crunch from the fresh corn and plenty of smokey heat from the chipotle pepper (it’s smokey outside, too, which is probably why chipotle pepper seemed so irresistible to me). To accompany it, I’ve slow-roasted my tomato harvest, turned my basil and parsley into a creamy purée with cannelini beans, olive oil and lemon juice, and sautéed up a lot of capsicums and onions to add some crunch.

Gorgeous.

Also, a quick announcement before I give you the recipe itself – as you may have gathered, I will be singing the Saint Matthew Passion with the Melbourne Bach Choir at the start of April. It’s going to be a rather gorgeous – and enormous! – performance, with three large choirs (I’m in Choir 2, which spends a lot of time interjecting with questions and interrupting arias with gratuitous chorales and choruses), an orchestra, and six soloists. If you like serious Baroque Oratorio, I recommend it (and you can buy tickets here).

Anyway, the unfortunate side-effect of all this glorious music is that I will be out at rehearsals every night next week until quite late… which means I am unlikely to be cooking *or* blogging much over the next ten days or so. I shall try to pop in to say hello, but if I don’t, you know why…

Your Shopping List

For the tomatoes

600 g tomatoes, preferably randomly sized and coloured and from your garden!

olive oil

salt, pepper

For the polenta

1 cup polenta

4 cups water

salt, pepper

1 chipotle chilli in adobo

150 g fresh corn kernels

25 g butter

1/3 cup cheese

For the puree

1 cup fresh basil leaves

1 cup fresh parsley leaves

400g tinned cannelini beans, drained

50 g pistachios

juice of 1 lemon

3 tablespoons olive oil

balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper

For the rest

olive oil

2 onions

6 long sweet peppers, multicoloured

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Posted in egg-free, garden, gluten-free, low glycemic index, main courses, Recipes, vegetarian

Tagged basil, capsicums, chilli, corn, egg-free, gluten-free, legumes, parsley, polenta, tomatoes, vegetarian

Review: Hot Cross Buns (and other Easter goodies) at Gewürzhaus

Posted on March 22, 2014 | 5 Comments

I am indulging in a lot of cooking classes of late, mostly because it’s how I reward myself for surviving grants and associated work chaos. And, coming home from this very relaxed and low-key class, I found myself reflecting on the different sorts of classes I do. There are the ones I do through Savour or through William Angliss, which are aimed at would-be professionals (and the odd professional looking to upgrade his or her skills), and they are fast-paced, and mentally taxing, and one takes home products that look as though they were made in a professional kitchen. One learns a lot of new techniques, but, at least in my case, one usually returns home with several things not really mastered to the level that the course aims for. And honestly, that’s fine – these are useful courses, and I’m not by any means a professional.

Then there are the courses I do through places like Gewürzhaus or the Whimsical Cakehouse, which are aimed at people who like cooking and want to spend a few hours in a kitchen learning to do a few new things that they aren’t quite game to figure out at home – play with new spices, learn a bit of cake decorating or some traditional recipes, make enriched yeasted breads. These are much more relaxed and sociable, and I, at least, tend to come home feeling pretty confident that I can make all those recipes in my kitchen.

Needless to say, I enjoy doing both kinds, and I enjoy even more bringing home the goodies I get to make…

Today’s course, ‘One a Penny, Two a Penny – Hot Cross Buns and European Easter Treats’, falls at the easy / relaxing end of the scale. Very low key, and a lovely way to spend an afternoon at the end of another long week. Under the guidance of Ina Low, we spent the afternoon making Hot Cross Buns, Tsoureki, and Torta Pasqualina, discussing different ways to dye eggs and how yeast works, and hearing about German Easter traditions, and how different (and disappointing) Easter is in Australia – when one hasn’t spent months and months in the cold and the dark waiting for the spring.

We clearly need a big festival in October, though I suspect that Melbourne really doesn’t get cold enough to count.

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Posted in Reviews, Workshops and classes

Tagged easter, gewürzhaus, hot cross buns, workshops and classes

Recipe: Stuffed zucchini on roasted tomatoes

Posted on March 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

I was originally going to post this to my Tomatoes challenge, but then grant season got the better of me and nothing happened at all. And now I have a Tofu challenge in play, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with that. But right now, I’m working on the backlog of recipes that I created and scribbled down onto random pieces of paper in February (in fact, what I scribble down is a list of ingredients and quantities, trusting myself to remember the method, which is a bit of a gamble if the piece of paper then gets knocked off the desk by a cat, and batted under a couch, and then only found many weeks later), since this blog has been very nearly a recipre-free zone of late.

Anyway. Zucchini flower season is almost over for us in Australia, but for once, I can give the Europeans and Americans a thrill by posting something that is about to come into season for a change! I am constitutionally incapable of not buying zucchini flowers when I see them, which means that I then have to instantly re-jig any menu plans I’ve made, as zucchini flowers must be used the day you buy them, or at the very most, the day after. In all probability, there are better ways to cook them – in fact, I am constantly being exhorted by farmers to try deep-frying them, stuffed or un-stuffed, in tempura batter, but since deep-frying is the one un-healthy culinary habit that I do not have, I am reluctant to learn it, even if tempura zucchini flowers does sound amazing. God, that sentence was dreadful. Sorry.

Anyway, since I eschew the deep-fryer, my preferred option for zucchini flowers has always been to stuff them with a herby spinach and ricotta mix, and then bake them either in a simple tomato sauce or on a bed of roasting tomatoes. So far, nobody has complained at the lack of deep-frying, so here, for your delectation, is the recipe I normally use. I apologise for the poor photographs – the light in my kitchen isn’t very good for photography. I promise you, these zucchini flowers taste amazing, however they may look in these photos.

Your Shopping List

12 zucchini flowers, preferable with the little zucchini still attached

1 kg assorted beautiful tomatoes

salt, pepper

1 tsp brown sugar

olive oil

2 tsp vinegar

oregano, to taste

150 g frozen spinach, defrosted (or a bunch of fresh)

300 g ricotta

50 g parmesan

a handful each of mint and basil leaves, chopped finely

nutmeg, pepper

1 egg

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Posted in cooking with vegetables, gluten-free, low fructose, low glycemic index, main courses, nut-free, Recipes, vegetarian

Tagged basil, gluten-free, low fructose, low GI, main courses, mint, nut-free, recipes, ricotta, spinach, tomatoes, vegetarian, zucchini flowers

Recipe: Miniature Pumpkins stuffed with Spiced Split Pea and Rhubarb Stew

Posted on March 18, 2014 | 5 Comments

This post is brought to you by Farmhouse Direct – or rather, by the fact that I have been too exhausted of late to contemplate getting up early to go to the market on a Saturday morning. But I can’t come at buying most of my veg from the supermarket, either, so instead I hopped online, looked for fruit and veg, filtered my search for Victorian Farmers, and then went to see what was available.

What was available was boxes of produce from Vegie Bunch – huge bunches of rhubarb, mixed boxes of cucumbers, beetroot, carrots, garlic and potatoes, and boxes of tiny Jack Be Little pumpkins that could only be described as adorable. I got some of everything, and it arrived on my doorstep on, I think, Thursday morning.

(And then I had to find places to put all of it, because none of this produce is small or self-effacing…)

Anyway, we had friends around to dinner on Friday, and what with it being Lent, I’m vegetarian – but what with it also being me having people around to dinner, it was absolutely necessary to make something spectacular. The Green Kitchen have a recipe for a split pea and rhubarb stew, for which I actually had most of the ingredients, and I thought it might be fun to stuff this into teeny tiny pumpkins and serve them roast potatoes, tomatoes from my garden, and a lot of tzatziki.

It was *amazingly* good, and I wouldn’t have thought to write it up, because the stew recipe was adapted from the Green Kitchen, until my friend asked if I was going to photograph the pumpkins, at which point I considered the recipe, considered how many ingredients and methods I’d changed, and realised that this was probably actually quite legit to write about. Also, the tzatziki absolutely makes this dish, and that was definitely my idea.

Of course, this means that there are only photos of the finished product, but I’m hoping that the finished product is cute enough that you won’t mind. Also, be warned – these little tiny pumpkins look like they will be a light meal, but this is just how they draw you in – we all managed to finish what was on our plates, but it was a near thing. These babies are filling, and I think that with a few more baby pumpkins I could have easily fed ten to twelve people rather than the four I was actually cooking for. I certainly had enough stuffing to fill more pumpkins…

Also, I apologise for the spice mixes – I didn’t have all the spices the recipe suggested, and I did have all these luscious spice mixes hanging around that seemed to fit the profile, so I used those instead. Because sometimes, one wants to use one’s beautiful spice mixes. I’m figuring that most of you probably do have some random Middle Eastern and chilli spice mixes lurking around your kitchen – here’s your opportunity to use them!

Your Shopping List

8 Jack Be Little Pumpkins, or other miniature pumpkins suitable for stuffing

3 tbsp virgin coconut oil

2 tsp of a good chilli con carne or similar spice mix, one which is heavy on both chilli and cumin

1 1/2 tbsp of a good middle eastern sweet spice mix such as ras el hanout or a turkish spice mix – you want something that has cardamom, cinnamon and the like, but also a little bit of savoury bite and heat to it.

1/2 tsp ginger

1 large onion, diced

6 garlic cloves, crushed,

500 g orange sweet potatoes

300 g carrots

5 sticks rhubarb

1 red apples

150 g yellow split peas

2 Lebanese cucumbers

500 g Greek yoghurt

a small bunch of mint

salt, pepper, olive oil