Monthly Archives: September 2011

How not to follow a recipe…

Posted on September 18, 2011 | 5 Comments

I’m slightly overwhelmed by other projects today, so here’s an old post from my other online journal that I ran across while looking for something else and found amusing.  Hopefully, you’ll find it amusing too.

Fontina, Cima di Rape and Toasted Almond Pizza, Catherine-style

Step 1. Hmm, I have bok choy AND spinach this week. What am I going to do with all these greens?

Step 2. Consider recipe for pizza with cima di rape. I have no notion what cima di rape is, but in the picture, it looks a bit like silverbeet. Bok choy is a bit like silverbeet…

Step 3. Maybe I can use the bok choy AND the spinach. It does look somewhat like spinach. Somewhat.

Step 4. Hmm, Fontina or Taleggio cheese, eh? Not generally available at Australian supermarkets, and in fact I haven’t a clue what either of these cheeses tastes like…

Step 5. …but really, everything tastes better with Jarlsberg.

Step 6. Ooh, look, I have some feta in the fridge. And a tiny tiny bit of aged cheddar. Everyone know that feta goes with spinach! And Jarlsberg and cheddar combine well…

Step 7. Hmm, this pizza dough would be better if I added a whole lot of herbs to it. Maybe some seeds too, to make it lower GI?

Step 8. How can this recipe not have onion in it? Fortunately, I have half an onion leftover from the stock I made this afternoon…

Step 9. I don’t really like almonds. I think I’ll use pine nuts instead.

Step 10. Notice for the first time the title of the recipe: Fontina, Cima di Rape and Toasted Almond Pizza. Realise that I am not using a single one of these ingredients…

Step 11. Consider whether I have perhaps gone a step too far in adapting this recipe?

Step 12. Conclude that it is a little late for someone who is putting bok choy on a pizza to pretend to delicate culinary sensibilities which she clearly does not have…

Step 13. Sigh. Here I am, owner of probably several hundred cookbooks, and I STILL can’t follow a recipe…

… I wrote this three years ago.  The only thing that has changed is that I now make random leafy green, pine-nut and feta pizza often enough that I’d forgotten what the original ingredients were…

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Posted in Writing about cooking

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Recipe: Anzac-y biscuits for (nearly) everyone

Posted on September 17, 2011 | 9 Comments

I have this friend who is very tricky to cook for, because she and her family between them are allergic to everything.  Well, perhaps not everything, but it’s certainly true to say that cooking for her involves avoiding all the ingredients I use when cooking for myself and Andrew, and replacing them with ingredients I would never use in anything I planned to eat myself (carob, for example.  Ugh.).  To be fair, part of this is about Incompatible Health Conditions – I eat a diet with a lot of salicylates in it, partly because they are the things that make most fruit and vegetables taste good, and partly because a diet high in salicylates is good for preventing type 2 diabetes, which runs in my family and would like to run in me (I can’t imagine why!). And salicylates are something my friend has to avoid.  So I look at her list of permitted ingredients and go – eep!  Catherine-poison!  And it all goes downhill from there.

Anyway, she can eat these cookies.  And so can I.  Which is such a rarity that it should be recorded for posterity.  Moreover, these cookies can be very easily adapted to just about anyone’s dietary requirements or tastes, which makes them very useful indeed.  The only people they won’t adapt really well for is people with the particular type of coeliac disease that includes intolerance to oats.  Sorry about that.  I’ll write something for you another time.  These cookies are oaty and not too sweet and something of a blank slate.  They are almost healthy.  I‘m going to start with what I cooked for my friend, and then list variations. Many, many variations.

Your Shopping List

150 g plain spelt flour
75-100 g chopped raw cashews
100 g brown sugar
100 g rolled oats (not quick oats)
65  g Nuttelex (dairy-free margarine)
60 g butter
50 g golden syrup
1/2 tsp bicarb of so
30 ml boiling water

Continue reading →

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Posted in baking, biscuits, dairy-free, egg-free, low fructose, nut-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

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Recipe: A Stew for Spring

Posted on September 16, 2011 | 1 Comment

This is lightly adapted from a recipe in Jack Bishop’s book The Complete Italian Vegetarian.  Mostly, I adapted it by screwing it up.  But you don’t need to do that part.  The rest of the adaptation was a matter of what was  looking beautiful at the market and the greengrocer’s this week.

This meal is surprisingly hearty for an all-vegetable dish, and it has heaps of flavour – far more than I would have expected.  It’s nice served with mashed potato, semolina or polenta, or with bread to mop up the juices.  I served it with roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes which was a mistake, really, if roasted potatoes can every actually be considered such a thing (I don’t know that they can, to be honest).

Your Shopping list

1 cup shelled borlotti beans (or you can use any other fresh beans, or shelled peas).  You’ll probably need three or so cups un-shelled, but this is not a precise recipe.
olive oil
4 french (golden) shallots, or a similar volume of spring onions, or four teeny tiny baby leeks
5 medium roma tomatoes
3 wild fennel bulbs, or 2 baby fennel bulbs, or one adult one
3 cups stock, any kind, but preferably home-made
a handful or two of baby carrots, or small carrots, peeled
2 bunches of asparagus.  Or more.  500g is good.
2 tablespoons butter
1-2 tablespoons flour or cornflour (optional)
freshly grated parmesan, to serve

Continue reading →

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Posted in cooking with vegetables, dairy-free, egg-free, everyday cooking, gluten-free, Italian, low glycemic index, main courses, nut-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

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Meat!

Posted on September 15, 2011 | 8 Comments

I always feel faintly guilty writing about meat on this blog.  It’s not that I pretend to be vegetarian or to write a vegetarian blog (though I admit, having this blog is influencing me to make more vegetarian food, because I like writing about it!), but I do know a lot of the people who read this regularly are vegetarian or vegan.  So they probably are not going to be especially interested in this post, which is entirely a gloat over the joys of meat.  And yet, it would feel dishonest not to write about meat, because that’s the thing I’m most excited about right now. Continue reading →

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Posted in cooking with meat, Writing about cooking

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Recipe: Orange Me Up (Scotty)!

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 2 Comments

What do you get when you cross orange salad with tiramisu?  In my case, you get something a lot like a very orangey, boozy, rich, trifle.  Which I choose to call ‘orange me up’, because tiramisu means ‘pick me up’, and I find the phrase ‘orange me up’ amusing.  And I was feeling decidedly oranged-up after eating this.  Though ‘Orangey Sue’ also has a certain silly appeal.

This, incidentally, is what happens when I try to make a light, healthy dessert.  I do fine at moderately healthy fruity desserts, such as fruit crumbles or fruit pies or balsamic strawberries with mascarpone, and sometimes I even like fruit salads, but there is something about the whole fruit-in-fruit-syrup that just brings out the worst in me.  I can’t leave it alone. It’s not a proper dessert.

But… there I was, with no idea what to make for dessert, and I saw this recipe  in Cook Simple for citrus fruits in orange and rosemary syrup, and it had blood oranges (which I have from the market), oranges (of which I have a tree full), lemons (ditto), rosemary (which I have in my garden) and grapefruit (which are certainy in season)! Clearly, this was the way to go.  The recipe suggested serving it with crême fraiche and almond biscuits.  I started enthusiastically planning acts of Extreme Biscuit Baking, but realised that with guests only an hour away and dinner not really made, this would be a bad idea.  And then the supermarket had sponge fingers on special, and I thought, hey, mascarpone is better than crême fraiche, and also, mascarpone + sponge fingers = tiramisu!  Which is way, way, too rich, and moreover has coffee in it (ugh!), but oranges would cut the richness…

And here we are.  This recipe makes enough to feed at least 8 people, and would probably be better spread around 12.  I suspect it would stretch to 16, especially if you made a little more of the orange salad.

Your Shopping List

500 ml fresh orange juice
200 ml water
175 g white sugar
3 sprigs rosemary
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 oranges
3 blood oranges
1 pink grapefruit
2 tangellos
175 g sponge finger biscuits
50 ml grand marnier
125 ml semi-sweet sherry
250 ml fresh orange juice
250 g mascarpone
250 g ricotta (the softer kind that comes in a tub)
2 tablespoons caster sugar, or to taste
50 g good dark chocolate
 

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Posted in desserts, egg-free, gluten-free, Italian, low fructose, nut-free, Recipes

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Recipe: Lemon Drink with Orange Flower Water

Posted on September 12, 2011 | 5 Comments

This is based on the recipe from Abla’s Lebanese Kitchen (speaking of Lebanese restaurants which I really must visit), but it’s inspired by the amazing lemon drink we had at Sabas on Saturday.  It’s quite quick to make, and an excellent use for all those lemons you have on your tree at this time of year.  Also, like many of these rather sweet, perfumed, Middle-Eastern drinks, it’s just the right thing to refresh and restore you after an afternoon spent digging in the garden and getting it ready for your Spring planting…  So it’s seasonal in every way.

Your shopping list

100 ml white or caster sugar
500 mls hot water
500 mls cold water (or you can just use 1 litre of cold water, but it does make it a bit harder to dissolve the sugar)
250 ml lemon juice
15-20 ml orange flower water (or rosewater, if you want to do this Abla’s way, or 10 ml each of rosewater and orange flower water), or to taste
 

Continue reading →

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Posted in dairy-free, drinks, egg-free, gluten-free, Middle-Eastern, nut-free, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

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Farmers’ Market Dinner…

Posted on September 11, 2011 | 4 Comments

Tonight’s menu:

  • Sorrel and silverbeet soup, with leeks, carrots, coriander and wild fennel
  • Home made barley bread rolls, with lavender salt on top and smoked garlic butter
  • Rhubarb crumble cake (made with a goose egg!!)

Tomorrow’s breakfast:

  • Home made barley rolls with Viennese Christmas Sugar on top and chocolate butter or raspberry-apricot jam

Lunch tomorrow will be more soup and rolls; dinner to be determined, but will probably be a lebanese lamb and chickpea stew, since I have very nice varieties of both these things, and vegetable sides to be determined.

And all this would be so much more worthy of bragging if I had actually got dinner on the table before 9:30 pm tonight.  Or if I’d managed to take any photos at all…

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Posted in shameless bragging, Writing about cooking

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Farmers’ Market – Spring has Sprung!

Posted on September 11, 2011 | 2 Comments
Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonder where the asparagus is?

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Yes, I know, that’s a pretty sad attempt at drawing asparagus.  But I’m afraid it’s as close to asparagus as I got today.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Farmer's Market, Photographic Posts

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Eating out: Sabas Lebanese Restaurant

Posted on September 10, 2011 | 7 Comments

We met up with Andrew’s parents for lunch today.  They live in Glen Waverley, which is not terribly close to Coburg, and given Andrew’s current homework load, and my current tiredness load, I suggested meeting somewhere between the two suburbs to save everyone driving and cooking time.  Ivanhoe looked like a good compromise location, so I went a-Googling and suggested Sabas.

I haven’t eaten Lebanese food in years.  We used to go out for Lebanese reasonably often when I was little, but when we moved to Adelaide there was a distinct lack of Lebanese restaurants, so we’d go Greek instead.  The part of Coburg I now live in is known as Little Turkey for its very large Turkish population and commensurate number of Turkish restaurants, and there’s a somewhat dodgy Greek place on our corner, but not a Lebanese restaurant in sight.  So I was pretty excited at going back to my childhood in this way!  And also at going to a new restaurant, something we don’t do very often.

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Posted in Eating Out, Middle-Eastern

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Recipe: Quick Rhubarb Crumble for Spring

Posted on September 8, 2011 | 13 Comments

I really want to write about – and cook – asparagus, because it’s Spring now, and I’m absolutely itching to get to the market on Sunday and see if they have asparagus yet.  I won’t buy asparagus until I find it at the farmers’ market – it’s one of those truly seasonal delights, and having asparagus from Queensland or Mexico in the middle of winter feels like cheating.  I bet it doesn’t taste as good, either.  One day, I’ll have to plant asparagus myself.

Anyway, I don’t have asparagus, but rhubarb also feels springlike, and is definitely at the farmers’ markets, so rhubarb is fair game for a night when the vegetable content of the meal was low and a fruit dessert was called for.  This recipe is mostly a Delia recipe, though it did develop some changes, and, well, let’s just say that her instructions are a lot less gory than mine.  I think I’ve spent a bit too much time time reading Copernicus the Homicidal Monkey recently. Also, I free-associate in strange ways when I’m up past my bedtime.

This crumble recipe is so easy and quick that I made it after choir tonight and had it prepared and ready to go in the oven by the time the pasta had finished cooking.  And it was so delicious – tart and rhubarby underneath and crisp and sweet on top – that we ATE it, nom nom nom, not every last bit, but much more of it than we needed after all that pasta, and I thought, oops, better write this one down before I forget what I did.  Which is to say, there are no photos.  This is not my standard fruit crumble recipe – it’s much less healthy and oaty and much more of a dessert.  But who’s complaining?

Your shopping list

1 bunch of rhubarb (about 450g once you’ve removed the leaves and chopped off the dodgy bits at the bottom of the stems)
50 g caster sugar
1-2 tsp vanilla essence, or replace the caster sugar with vanilla sugar
70 g almond meal
80 g self-raising flour
50 g raw sugar, or a combination of raw and brown sugar
50 g butter or margarine (I ran out of proper butter and used the spreadable kind – it worked just fine)

Continue reading →

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Posted in dairy-free, desserts, egg-free, everyday cooking, low fructose, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian

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