Category Archives: sauces, toppings and frostings

Recipe: Mole Sauce, or something, with I only wish I knew what it goes with, other than bemusement

Posted on March 25, 2013 | 6 Comments

tomatilloSo I got these tomatilloes at the market, and a whole big box of peppers and chillis and then I had this black chocolate and I had pumpkin seed meal, and all of this pretty much said ‘Mexican’ to me, but there’s a problem – I really don’t know thing one about Mexican cooking.  I’m sort of aware of flavours that go together, but not how to make them do so, or anything like that.

When in doubt, I roast things, so I did that with the vegetables, and then stared at it all in confusion for a while, before sticking everything in a blender with a bunch of extra spices and  other bits and pieces.  It tasted pretty much as I imagine mole sauce is supposed to taste – spicy and chocolatey and dense – but then I didn’t know what to put it on.  I wound up roasting some zucchini and pumpkin and stirring the mole through that, and then I didn’t know what to put *that* on.  Rice?  Corn chips? Tortillas?  And what about protein?  And – argh.  I don’t know.  I still don’t know.  Something tells me it would be excellent on chicken, which is a fat lot of good to me right now. 

Anyway, I do know that it’s a tasty sauce – fresh-tasting and bitter and chocolatey and aromatic and peppery-hot – so I’m writing it up here just as a sauce, and maybe one of you will be able to figure out what it’s for…

Your Shopping List

6 tomatillos
4 small tomatoes
2 chillis (one red and one green is fun)
3 small round peppers
3 capsicums, assorted colours
5 long frying peppers, also sometimes called sweet chillis, assorted colours
1 bulb garlic
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
50 g pumpkin seed meal, or pumpkin seeds, toasted and then ground
40 g black chocolate – 99% cocoa, so the really bitter stuff – chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp chipotle pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp thyme
salt, to taste
 

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Posted in dairy-free, egg-free, low glycemic index, nut-free, Recipes, sauces, toppings and frostings, vegan, vegetarian

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Recipe: Easy, Yet Awesome, Tangy Lime Guacamole

Posted on July 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

This barely qualifies as a recipe.  It has two ingredients, other than seasonings, and the method could be summed up in a single sentence.  Except, this is me, Catherine McWordy, writing this, so we all know that I will rabbit on randomly about nothing in particular regardless…

Basically, I had this kaffir lime, and these avocadoes, and this vegetarian chilli in need of a guacamole, but I was too lazy to do anything elaborate, so I just made this, and then it tasted really good and really *interesting* – I love how perfumed and tangy kaffir lime is – and it was too late to take photos.  You will have to imagine it for yourself.  Or make it, of course.

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2 ripe avocadoes.  If you know how to tell from the outside the point at which an avocado is ripe but not browning, you are a wiser person than I am.
1 kaffir lime
salt and pepper to taste
 

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Posted in Basics, dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, low fructose, low glycemic index, nut-free, Recipes, sauces, toppings and frostings, vegan, vegetarian

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Recipe: Mayonnaise with Roasted Garlic, Tarragon, and Hubris

Posted on February 19, 2012 | 4 Comments

Hello!  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Unfortunately, I forgot, when I started this blog in the slow season at work, that there would come a time of year when I would be drowning in a seemingly endless sea of grant applications.  The nice thing about this time of year is that I get to feel useful – I’m really good at organising grants, and I actually quite like talking new postdocs through the application process.  Another nice thing is that I work up so much time in lieu that I get to have a little holiday at the end of this period.  But the flip-side is that I am working long hours, in addition to all my usual sidelines, and this leaves little time for cooking, let alone blogging.

And then we get days like last Thursday, when I had a totally brilliant idea for dinner while I was still at work, and sent Andrew out to buy the ingredients while I was at choir.  I was going to make my amazing pan-roasted fillet steak salad with home-made mayonnaise, and in my head, I had already started drafting my cheerful, friendly, reassuring post about how, despite what you may have heard, mayonnaise is actually really *easy*!  I’ve made it five times, and it has worked without a fuss every time!  And here are my secrets!  I even had a delightful little side comment about saving the egg-whites for meringues or, if one was feeling ambitious (as indeed I was), for macarons!

Ha, I say, and Ha again.  I got home on Thursday night and found that my lovely husband had indeed bought the ingredients I didn’t have, and had roasted the garlic, just like I had asked him to.  So I settled down to make mayonnaise.  I even took photos! And it didn’t work.  Not even a little bit.  And I have absolutely no idea why.  So I threw out the first batch and tried again.  This time, I know exactly why it didn’t work.  Apparently, adding way too much vinegar very early in the piece ruins everything.  Since I no longer had any roast garlic left, I grimly added another egg yolk, and decided that it was time to get out the beaters, rather than using the fork method.  And finally, finally, it came together.  I was so relieved that I promptly flicked a large dollop of the mayonnaise into the egg-whites which I was so frugally reserving for future meringue needs (and this is why you should cover things you leave on the benchtops, even if it’s only going to be for a few minutes)…

So yes.  Do try making mayonnaise.  It’s delicious when you make it at home, and so exciting when it comes together.  But if it’s late at night after a long day of work and choir, I strongly recommend having some of the good quality bought stuff to hand.  It will save you a great deal of frustration…

Oh, and one final confession.  After all that, I no longer had the faintest idea what quantities of olive oil I had used in the mayonnaise!  So I have come up with my quantities by looking online and through my cookbooks until I saw something that looked about right.  And on my merry way, I ran across this website which talks a lot more about how egg yolks emulsify things, and it’s all very fascinating, so I think you should have a look at it – though I don’t recommend using 100 cups of oil for each egg yolk…

Your shopping list

1 bulb of garlic
olive oil for roasting garlic
1 egg yolk (make sure it’s fresh, and please get free-range if you possibly can)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup olive oil (you may need a little more to get the consistency you like)
1 tsp white wine vinegar
black pepper and dried tarragon, to taste
 

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Recipe: Microwave Lemon Curd, with bonus meringue

Posted on July 16, 2011 | 11 Comments

Just a short post today, because today has been loooong… and it hasn’t even had any cooking in it.  Of course, it might have felt less loooong if I hadn’t decided last night that the best solution to ‘where can we all go for dessert?’ was ‘I can make cupcakes!  Vegan, gluten-free cupcakes!  Also my house is full of confectionery!  Let’s go to my place!’.  Needless to say, we were all bouncing off the walls for a while after that, and I really was not my best at choir this morning.

Anyway, I made lemon curd a few weeks ago, to go with the dozens and dozens of scones, and took photos of it, but never wrote it up.  So now is definitely the time.  Besides, lemon curd is one of those things that is really, really tricky until you figure out how easy it is.  All that rubbish about ‘until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon’ doesn’t help much either.  I don’t know about you, but I never did figure out just how thick that was.  So here’s my microwave method, which I promise you will work – just don’t do what I do and wander off to do something else in the middle and forget to take it out of the microwave and stir it.

Your Shopping List

4 egg yolks (you realise, of course, that now you will have to make meringues out of those egg-whites?  See below for a recipe – in the meantime, just save them in a clean, metal or glass bowl.)
75g caster sugar
40g butter
60ml lemon juice (about one juicy lemon)

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Recipe: Ricotta and Herbs

Posted on June 28, 2011 | 2 Comments

Still feeling too seedy to really be creative, so here’s a really short, easy recipe, inspired by The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook.  This recipe makes me feel a little sad, because right now is absolutely not the season for it – indeed, dinner tonight was semolina gratin with a wintry stew featuring mushrooms, cardoons, carrots, broccoli and cannelini beans, so heavily improvised that I haven’t the faintest clue what the recipe would be.  But for you sun-drenched Northern Hemisphere types, here’s something lovely to have on good Italian bread while you are waiting for the weather to cool down enough for cooking to be tolerable.  Or else, just make a dinner of bread, tomato salad, cannelini beans puréed with lemon and roasted garlic, some minted cucumbers or grilled eggplant or roasted capsicum, or cold chicken or whatever other nice, cool foods your fridge and pantry have to offer, and this lovely refreshing spread to just make your bread wonderful.

Jack Bishop says you should toast the bread to go with this, but I think if bread is good enough to be worth eating, it deserves to be eaten as it is – soft and fresh  to go with the softness and freshness of the ricotta.  And please – make sure it’s good bread, not that cotton wool stuff.  Putting this spread on a white sandwich loaf insults both you and it – and you both deserve better.

Your Shopping List

250g good ricotta – the best you can afford, so go to the deli counter or your Italian food shop, and do not even think about making this with something that comes in a tub.  You’re looking for something solid, not runny – in a pinch, you can drain slightly watery ricotta through cheesecloth or paper towels for an hour or two, but it’s better to start with the good stuff.
1 small bunch of basil
1 small bunch of mint
salt, pepper
1 loaf of good Italian bread – pasta dura is ideal for this.  French bread will do in a pinch, but no cotton wool.  I mean it!
 

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Posted in egg-free, everyday cooking, gluten-free, low fructose, low glycemic index, nut-free, Recipes, sauces, toppings and frostings, side dishes, vegetarian

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Recipe: Chocolate for Breakfast

Posted on May 22, 2011 | 6 Comments

The official name for this recipe, which comes from Less Meat, More Veg, is ‘Chocolate, Coconut and Raspberry Spread’, but I like to think of it as Chocolate for Breakfast, as that is basically the point.  You can say all you like that it has 1 serve of fruit in it, but that’s basically irrelevant – the real point of this recipe is that you get to have chocolate for breakfast, just like I’m doing right now.

Incidentally, I really did want to share a nice, healthy recipe from the above book, and I may later – there are plenty to choose from.  But I just couldn’t go past this one.

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100g fresh or frozen raspberries
125ml coconut milk
200g dark chocolate, preferably 70% cocoa solids

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Recipe: Coconut and Lemon Buttercream

Posted on May 16, 2011 | 4 Comments

This is a very quick and easy recipe for a lovely, rich, coconut-infused icing that is dairy free and will work on all sorts of citrus or coconut cakes, but particularly on the coconut and lemon cake found in Veganomicon.  It’s also a very quick and easy post, because I’m still recovering from Eurovision – there will be something more substantive tomorrow, I promise!

Your Shopping List

125g unrefined coconut oil or coconut butter (see note below)
Rind and juice of a nice, juicy lemon
500g icing sugar (golden icing sugar would be lovely here)

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Basics that aren’t: Béchamel Sauce (and variations)

Posted on May 14, 2011 | 13 Comments

Ah, béchamel sauce. As I wrote yesterday, it is one of the great culinary classics that dates back at least as far as the kitchens of Antonin Carême and probably further… but it’s also a definitive ingredient in comfort foods ranging from tuna mornay to lasagne (vegetarian or otherwise) to cauliflower cheese. Hmm, looking at that list, it has a very retro feel to it – is it comfort food because it represents the food of our childhoods, or is it just that there are few things more cozy on a cold night than a dish of something covered with hot, cheesy sauce?

Béchamel sauce is one of those things that isn’t hard except when it is. If I’m paying attention, not doing anything else in the kitchen and, ideally, following a recipe (at least as far as quantities of ingredients are concerned), I can make a good béchamel in under ten minutes. If I’m tired, distracted, too lazy to measure out my flour or too rushed to add my milk properly, it will be a disaster – despite the fact that I generally make béchamel at least once a week.

So here’s a basic béchamel recipe which states, I hope, all the things that are obvious and all the things that might be less obvious in getting it to work. Having just spent several hours making variations on béchamel, I feel I can say with some confidence that if you follow this recipe, you will get a good sauce.  (And if you are vegan, gluten intolerant, lactose intolerant, or just interested in variant sauces, keep reading your way down the page – I promise you’ll find something tasty there that you can eat). Continue reading →

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